


red lips, blue eyes

by iiruwu



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Banter, Bisexual Nancy Wheeler, Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Robin Buckley, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, Stranger Things Spoilers, a LOT of gay hand stuff, byler is hinted at, side harringrove
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iiruwu/pseuds/iiruwu
Summary: Robin looks... pretty. Really pretty.The thought should scare her, but it doesn’t, because the alcohol is thrumming behind her ribs and buzzing beneath her skin, liquid courage taking form.She decides to admire. She thinks she deserves it, just this once.Or: Robin stumbles upon Nancy at the Halloween party rather than Jonathon. From there, a strange yet profound friendship forms between the two of them. Robin yearns for more and Nancy aches deep inside.
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Billy Hargrove, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler, Will Byers & Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 46
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello! this was originally meant to just be a short character study but i got carried away and, well... yeah. you can tell that my original plan got very derailed. pls enjoy my rendition on nancy and robin being shitfaced together!
> 
> i also miiiiight make this a multi-chapter fic, who knows? :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a drunken nancy wheeler is helped home by robin, who's also drunk herself.

Nancy regretted drinking at this point. 

It was fun at first, guzzling the strange concoction of alcohol and shitty off-brand fruit punch in the Newtons’ household. The beverage was weirdly warm and it made her feel queasy when she’d opened her mouth and let it slide down her throat like it was nothing, but— in all fairness, everything she’d eaten in the past week made her feel queasy no matter what it was. So why was this any different? She just hadn’t wanted to feel anything, to get lost in the crowd of sweaty and disgustingly horny teenagers, to forget her problems. 

Each and every movement of hers on the dance floor felt stiff and almost robotic. Everytime her eyes closed for longer than a mere few moments, she’d just see Barbara, at the bottom of Steve Harrington’s stairs, with those pained brown eyes hidden behind her spectacles. And if she’d let them stay closed any longer, her mind conjured a Demagorgan instead, it’s petal-like head opening up to swallow her whole. So she tried to get her mind off of it by drinking and dancing and drunkenly smiling at Steve like his very existence wasn’t tearing her up inside. His eyes looked like hers and Nancy felt sick everytime she’d stare into them. So she was thankful, to say the least, that he’d decided on wearing sunglasses tonight.

But then Steve takes his sunglasses off so that he can, in his words, “properly look at how pretty she is”, and her stomach twists up into a tight knot of dread. Nancy looks up at him, watching the way his smile seems to spread across his face and then suddenly falter. He’s saying something, but she can’t make it out, only seeing Barbara’s eyes staring at her with hatred. The regret aches in Nancy’s core. Her shoulders are shaking as she walks— more like dashes— away from Steve toward the punch bowl again with desperation. He’s chasing after her because of course he is, and she doesn’t care, dipping her red solo cup into the bowl. They’re both scuffling over the cup while bickering. The edges of her vision are blurred in the indistinct fuzzy way that they always are when she’s drunk. Steve is hard to make out against the dim lights. It’s still not _dark_ enough. She doesn’t want to see his eyes anymore, or his face, or his—

The drink slams straight into Nancy’s chest after Steve gives up, bright red seeping into every little wrinkle of her white shirt. 

Nancy can’t _do_ this anymore.

She’s so tired. 

The guilt is immeasurable, and being with Steve makes it so much worse than she ever imagined it would. She doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, doesn’t do things like she used to anymore. Steve wants things to be normal and so does she, but she just can’t seem to grasp onto whatever normalcy is barely left within her. It slips through her hands, right past the fingers that clutch onto everything, anything, _so_ desperately. That stupid gel-slicked mullet bounces with each bob of Steve’s head, his frown growing with every “bullshit” that’s spit with such potent venom in his direction. She looks into his eyes and prays, hopes within herself, that instead of Barbara Purser she can see Steve Harrington looking back at her. But it’s to no avail. The shame is overwhelming, weighing her down with every word out of her mouth. He’s gone as fast as he’s there after Nancy goes too far, says something she shouldn’t have, her cheek still tingling at the reminder of his caresses.

The bathroom smells like punch-flavored booze and that fancy cologne Steve always wears, the one that smells like pungent musk and smokey bonfires or some bullshit like that. Nancy’s nostrils flare, her eyebrows pinching together. She doesn’t want to cry right now. She will _not_ cry. 

The white towelette is doing absolutely nothing for her shirt and Nancy knows it. She stops, lets go of it, and looks at herself. There’s red on her chin and on her neck and on her everything. She wonders how she’s going to explain the stain to her mom.

Her legs are struggling to hold up the weight that makes up Nancy Wheeler, so heavy with burden and guilt and shame. 

The weight is too much. 

She sinks to the floor of the bathroom, head falling between her knees. 

Her bones ache and hurt with the weight of everything and everyone. With the weight of the mistake she’d made last year. With the weight of the Upside-Down hanging in the air. Nancy whimpers, palms going to her eyes in a futile attempt to stop the tears from getting everywhere. 

Steve Harrington was all she had going for her, and despite being a shitty person, he was still her anchor. And maybe she was his, but honestly— with him, Nancy could never tell. 

He was a consistent familiarity in the bizarreness that had become their lives after everything, though. Maybe they’d stayed together for so long out of necessity, like two lonely traumatized people clinging onto each other, because what else could they do? What else could _any_ of them do but try to hold onto whatever normalcy they could?

But now she has no anchor left. No one to hold her down, to make her feel like she’s still in Hawkins, and not in another dimension where something can jump out at her from the dark shadowy corners of her bedroom at night.

Time passes and Nancy doesn’t know how long goes by with her sitting there, palms digging into her sockets, the tears dripping down her wrists. Occasionally there’s a cheer or two, probably for Indiana’s new resident dickhead, Billy Hargrove, and the consistent boom of music, vibrating the walls and the rickety windowsills as if the house is on the verge of collapsing. Far in the back of her mind, she hopes it really does collapse. That’d be a real fun one to deal with. Much more fun than the whole ‘best friend being killed by a Demogorgon because of you’ thing.

  
  
  


__________

The door creaks open after a long while. Nancy doesn’t hear it over the pound of her heart hammering against her ribcage as she tries to calm her sporadic breathing. It closes and the sound of heels clicking against tile echo along every wall.

“Holy fuck! Why are y-” The sound of a familiar voice squeaks down at her in surprise. Nancy winces at the shrill tone, shoulders tensing up until they’re practically around her ears. 

That voice is… Robin Buckley, she distantly registers. 

Nancy had Trigonometry with her last year. They sat next to each other, Nancy often coming in late, being too busy mourning over her ‘missing’ best friend, being too frazzled over the fact that there was another dimension right beneath her feet in Hawkins, Indiana. Robin’s presence was a rather strange one. Regardless, it was a constant, something that never changed, and so Nancy found herself feeling lighter everytime she’d sink into her chair and Robin would say something nice yet still teasing all at once.

She’d been moderately aware of the fact that they weren’t exactly friends, but they were _something,_ and she could never quite put her finger on what.

They’ve had a number of conversations about how erratic Mrs. Sullivan was even during the morning, in hushed whispers and snarky utters that no one else seemed to care about enough to pick up on, and about how mutually difficult the class was for them both, and about— well, you get the point. On the rare occurrence that Robin was sick, or when she was travelling on some nerdy band trip (yes, Nancy knew about that and didn’t care, much to Robin’s surprise), Nancy _swore_ that time slowed down in Trigonometry on those days.

Nancy remembers seeing her crack a smile for the first time all year, so very vividly, a month or so into the fall semester, after Nancy’d made a snide comment on Sullivan’s stupid mathematical tangents. 

It was adorable, the way her eyes crinkled and lit up with mirth. 

Nancy buried the thought as soon as it’d formed in her mind.

The thought was… scary, honestly, maybe even terrifying. So she kept Robin away, at a distance, far enough for them to only be acquaintances at best; close enough for Nancy to greet her every morning with a wave and a joke that only Robin could understand. Someone like Nancy, broken and prissy and ostentatious, wasn’t meant to like other girls. She especially wasn’t meant for Robin, who seemed to be happy in her own little bubble, unaware of the traumas beneath Indiana. Someone like Steve, who knew what she’d gone through, was better for her. Even though she didn’t love him anymore in the same way he loves her.

Eventually the year had passed and summer rolled in, allowing for Nancy to forget her existence. Robin was no more but a daydream, a fantasy forgotten in lazy summer nights and cool bed sheets that shielded her from the heat. And above all, tooth-rottingly sweet kisses from Steve. The best distraction. He hogged all of her attention from dusk till dawn. It actually worked for a while, too. Nancy almost convinced herself that she loved Steve. She’d buried every memory or thought even remotely related to Robin or her dumb freckles and her smart mouth. 

Now, though? 

Now, she wasn’t so sure whether she wanted to bury those thoughts anymore or not.

“Shit, sorry. I didn’t see you down here,” Robin talks much more quietly this time, voice so gentle it practically sounds like a whisper when every sound is muffled by Nancy’s shoulders pressed up against each ear. Slowly, her shoulders relax, the palms of her hands dropping. 

She looks up, past lashes that are clumped together with the remnants of tears, at Robin. She’s kneeling down across from where Nancy is sat, hands in front of her like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Nancy swallows thickly, eyes glancing at the halo atop Robin’s head. An angel, huh? Her lips quirk up into a wounded smile, one that’s pained with the weight of truly everything, yet it’s still there on Nancy’s mouth, just barely visible enough for Robin to slump and stop tensing at the fact that she’s protruded on a crying Nancy.

“I like the… costume,” Nancy awkwardly says, ignoring the way that Robin stares at, well, everything that is Nancy Wheeler right now. Red stains all over, puffy red eyes, and mascara that’s on her face in smudged streaks. She probably looks like a hot mess, minus the hot. Still, Nancy is too shitfaced to care, gesticulating at the white frilly dress and the silver heels. Robin actually _laughs_ after a moment of taking Nancy in, her red lips shining in the bathroom light. 

Huh.

Robin looks... pretty. Really pretty. 

The thought should scare her like it used to, a year ago, but it doesn’t, because the alcohol is thrumming behind her ribs and buzzing beneath her skin, liquid courage making itself known.

She decides to admire. She thinks she deserves it, just this once.

Nancy can see her freckles even beneath the makeup, sees the way it spans down her collarbone and across her slim arms. It’s present wherever she looks, and wow, did she mention how great white looked on Robin? The color illuminates her presence, makes her absolutely shine like she’s the center of attention. Even in a grimy bathroom. Around her neck is a pearl necklace, Nancy notices. Robin’s fingers are gliding along the pearls as she fiddles with it. Nancy simply watches the way Robin’s eyes follow her stare, down to her hands, back up at her in a silent realization. Her cheeks are tinged pink and Nancy is too inebriated right now to tell if they were already pink or if she was blushing. Shit. She’s really staring, isn’t she? Nancy blinks at her, absentmindedly wiping the clump of mascara that’d formed on her palm onto the tiled floor.

“Uh… are you… I mean- Where- Are you okay?” Robin stumbles over her words, fiddling with the hem of her dress now, rather than the necklace adorning her neck, “And thanks. I’d say the same, but.” She motions at the shirt as if Nancy isn’t already aware of its presence. Nancy huffs out a snort, crossing her arms like she’s irritated but not really.

“Thanks for noticing, Buckley.” Nancy drawls, lip curling into a sneer.

“Well, it _does_ sort of stick out. It’s impossible not to notice, Wheeler.” Robin quips, eyebrow lifting. Seems like she still has that same fire in her, Nancy notices.

Nancy _wants_ to be mad at Robin for barging in and deciding to point out something that’s already so fucking obvious— ugh, she can feel the stain starting to get sticky and disgusting— but she can’t really commit to the faint anger in the back of her conscious. She feels relief, more than anything else, at the fact that Robin Buckley managed to stumble upon her in such a pitiful state of all people. If it were Carol Perkins, she would’ve said or done something that tipped Nancy into a state of absolute mental breakdown. She wasn’t even sure _what_ she’d end up doing if someone like Carol arrived. All she knew is that it wouldn’t have been pretty.

So she lets out a dry laugh at Robin’s reply instead of getting mad and tries to sit up because she needs to leave, needs to get away from Robin before this image of her on the bathroom floor at a houseparty, crying with booze all over her, clearly drunk, becomes ingrained in her head. Nancy doesn’t want another person to look at her and think that she’s a fuck-up or a slut or to _pity_ her, above all. Robin in particular thinking any of those things would tear Nancy up inside. Her hands are shaking as they clutch the counter, legs not cooperating with her silent pleads to bolt. Within a moment, two gentle yet prying hands are at her shoulders, trying to stop her where she stands.

“Just- let me-” Nancy tries to tear herself away from Robin’s reach, but her entire body feels like its jelly from the neck down, vision growing hazy slowly but surely. 

“Let you what? You’re not okay right now.” Robin argues, softly nudging her onto the bathroom counter. She says it like it’s a statement of fact, even though Nancy hadn’t answered when Robin asked if she was okay.

That alone makes Nancy feel too vulnerable for her liking. It’s almost like Robin can see through her facade with ease. Maybe she can. Nancy wouldn’t put it past her.

She’s tried so hard to keep her problems to herself during the past few months, because why the fuck should she tell anyone else when everybody has their own issues, yet Robin is deciding to make this hard on her with her stupid observational skills. Nancy doesn’t want to give in, even though the warmth her delicate hands emit are comforting in a way nothing else possibly could be. She wants to lean into Robin’s space so badly.

They honestly might’ve been friends in another universe, in some place like the Upside-Down, defying reality— except things are probably better over there, and Nancy’s not struggling to get out of bed everyday over in that dimension. Like she is here.

But they’re not in that place, and despite not being there, Nancy still somehow trusts Robin even while being at what is considerably her worst right now. 

That alone is enough, just barely enough, for her to not storm out of the bathroom and run. Instead, her head turns to Robin, eyes filled to the brim with fear and worry and too much for someone like Nancy to expose to her. But Robin doesn’t look away, doesn’t pretend like she can’t see everything lingering beneath— obvious in the way her shoulders sag and her eyebags are standing out even with makeup on. Nancy knows her fatigue is easy to see. She knows, but Steve never says anything about it, so she doesn’t either. Robin lets the hand on her shoulder wander just slightly, down to her forearm, giving her a firm squeeze. Nancy’s eyes widen. Robin notices it, doesn’t she?

It feels so nice that someone acknowledges her fatigue. 

She thinks if she revels in the feeling too much, she’ll cry. So she tries not to.

After a long moment, Nancy goes pliant against the fingers that splay across her arms and stay there, the warm touch lessening the feeling like she’s floating away. She slouches against the counter, all the fight in her lost, and Robin sighs like she’d thought that Nancy would truly stumble off into the night. Robin’s fingers rub little circles into her pale skin and her breath stutters at the sensation.

Her hand feels scarily similar to an anchor, and although it’s a temporary one, she grasps onto it for dear life and doesn’t let go. Not now, when there’s nothing else to keep Nancy grounded. When there’s nothing and no one else left to comfort her.

Nancy’s leaning against every touch like Robin’s a fireplace during the cold desolate winter and she’s desperate to be warm again. It’d be embarrassing in any other context but Nancy is quite literally _shivering_ at this point, the punch growing cold and tacky-feeling against bare skin. She should’ve brought a damn coat, or something.

Robin grabs a fresh towelette and turns on the tap, biting her lip as she runs the cloth under warm water. Nancy absentmindedly wonders if she realizes the red lipstick will stain her teeth. 

The silence spans out into a tranquility between them. 

“...I’m not okay.” Oof, too heavy. Nancy needs to lighten the blow.

“What could’ve possibly made you think that?” Nancy sarcastically inquires, shrugging in an ‘I totally wasn’t crying on the bathroom floor’ sort of way. Robin snorts again, and Nancy finds that she likes the sound of it. Drunk Nancy must be a bit funny, because wow, she hadn’t heard her laugh this much in Trigonometry like, ever. To be fair though, Trigonometry wasn’t exactly the funniest class. It was more yawn-inducing rather than anything else.

“Honestly? I don’t know. You look perfectly fine to me.” Robin pokes fun at Nancy with no hesitation and tries to dab the smudges off of her, but she’s swatting at Robin’s hand, clearly piqued, to which she chuckles and retracts her arm only to be guided back toward Nancy’s neck with her stained hands, huffing. 

It’s a strange thing, but it takes some weight off Nancy for some reason, almost as if she’s a normal teenager for a singular moment, like the meager act of simply admitting she isn’t okay is lessening the mental load somehow. 

Robin is so close, once again, that Nancy can count the freckles on her face, and with a small inhale, she catches the faint scent of cheap wine and rose perfume on Robin. Nancy’s verbal filter has dissipated, having been long gone ever since her talk with Steve. So she says the first things that come to mind, her nose scrunching up.

“You smell like cheap wine,” Nancy murmurs, eyes shutting. 

“Well, guess we _both_ stink like booze, then, don’t we?” She hums, one hand on the back of Nancy’s neck. Robin’s thumb bristles against the stray hairs on her nape, and Nancy shivers, tilting her head up for everything to be more accessible. She can feel the way Robin stops moving for a second, like she’s frozen, before rigidly continuing.

“What’re you supposed to be anyways?” Robin asks, voice sounding strange. 

  
“Lana from Risky Business. It would’ve made sense if you saw Steve, he was Joel.” The end of Nancy’s sentence turns slightly shaky without her being able to help it.

“Ah, Steve. Right,” Robin mumbles, like she’d almost forgotten about his existence, too wrapped up in her thoughts. Honestly, Nancy gets it. She retracts the damp cloth to run it under the tab once more. Her eyes flutter open in disappointment. Nancy could happily just fall asleep on the counter right about now, but she doesn’t, much to her body’s discontent.

_‘Into The Groove’_ by Madonna is playing, the bass from the speakers reverberating into every corner of the relatively quaint house. The two of them don’t talk for a while, Nancy struggling to keep her eyes open while Robin continues cleaning the mess with her nimble hands. 

She drops the towel onto the counter abruptly, and for some reason, Nancy gets scared that she’ll walk out, like Steve did.

_‘Don’t leave,’_ Nancy wants to whisper. She feels absolutely pathetic. She can’t be alone again. 

The thoughts will just become overwhelming and she’ll end up on the floor of the bathroom with her face in her hands once more if Robin leaves. Nancy _knows_.

Robin stays where she is, unmoving. A shaky exhale of relief leaves Nancy’s lips at the realization. Robin reaches for a few tissues and runs them under the water. Nancy hunches in on herself like she’s trying to forget the pitifulness sitting in her gut, clawing at her. 

“Thank you,” She mutters, words starting to jumble together into an incoherent mess.

“Huh?” Robin doesn’t answer at first, not hearing what Nancy says, a small grimace plastered onto her face as she glances over. Nancy catches her eyes. The grimace softens. 

“Oh- I said thanks. For, uh, helping me. And sorry, too. You probably came with people.” Nancy slurs, rubbing her palms together in an attempt to regain some warmth back. 

“It’s fine, Wheeler.” Robin asserts, her voice slightly firm and distant. Something seems to have changed in her demeanor. The realization makes her bottom lip wobble. Her eyes stray to the floor as she sniffles. Nancy doesn’t blame Robin. She’d be annoyed if she had to take care of some bratty girl in the bathroom of a party she was meant to be enjoying, too.

The tears don’t come, despite her eyes glossing over with the possibility of inbound droplets. She simply sits there and breathes, lets the air fill her lungs, eyesight blurry with both the looming threat of crying and the alcohol that sits in her gut. Robin’s legs are in her vision suddenly, a hand going to her chin. When her head is tilted up, Nancy sees Robin again, way too close and way too pretty. It’s almost too much. What is with Robin and getting in her _space_ so much? Not that she minds. Quite the opposite; it’s really taking a lot of intoxicated restraint not to do something stupid.

She stares at Robin head-on, biting on her lip to keep from it wobbling. Robin sighs after an evaluative look. “Don’t- Don’t cry,” She affirms, sounding confused and concerned all at once, “I’m not going anywhere. How’d you get to the party?” Nancy hears her talk, doesn’t really register it, focusing a little too much on the thumb beneath her mouth. Just sitting there. Nancy needed to get out of this weird phase she was in right now— considering she’d just admitted she didn’t love Steve not even that damn long ago— as soon as possible. Her emotions are flipping on and off and back and forth so much right now; she feels like she’s on the cusp of alcoholic overconsumption.

“Um…” Her eyebrows furrow. What did she say, again?

“Don’t tell me Steve drove you,” Robin groans, nostrils flaring.

“What? Why?” Nancy asks, worrying her lip between her teeth.

“He left, like, ten minutes ago. With that asshole, Billy.” She juts her thumb out toward the door. The weight is still too much for Nancy, and her head sinks without the support of Robin’s hand.

“Billy? That’s… weird. I thought they were archenemies or some idiotic shit like that.” Nancy rambles, feeling stupid. It seems like she didn’t know as much about Steve as she should have. But why should she care anymore?

“Who the hell knows. Boys will be boys, I guess. One minute they’re on the verge of pummeling each other with their fists and the next they’re sharing a drink. Fuckin’ weirdos.” Robin grumbles, crossing her arms. Nancy laughs at that, at the way Robin seems genuinely repulsed. It’s more of a hiccup and then a snicker rather than an actual laugh. Same shit, she decides.

“Whatever. Fuck Steve, I don’t want to see his face right now,” Nancy bluntly says. 

“Wh- Damn, Wheeler! Brutal!” Robin seems surprised, eyes as wide as saucers, looking like someone that’s been told groundbreaking news. 

Nancy blinks at her, thinking it isn’t that surprising, at first. Most people either despise Steve or love Steve (but Nancy thinks the more accurate term for ‘love’ is kiss his ass), there’s no in between. But it makes sense that she’s shocked, considering they’re dating. Or— _were_ dating? She doesn’t know the logistics of it right now. Regardless, no one in Hawkins knows yet. Soon it’ll be the talk of their small shitty town, just like literally everything else that fucking happens, because no one knows how to keep their mouth shut, mooching on whatever they can find to gossip over and form theories about. Who the hell knew what the theory would be this time. Nancy cheated on Steve; Steve abused Nancy; Nancy was too much of a whore. She wouldn’t be surprised to hear any of those in passing.

Nancy doesn’t really know what to say, so she just shrugs.

Robin giggles, like she’s being let in on a secret, and Nancy supposes she is, so she giggles along with her till she’s clutching her stomach and hunching over. This is nice, she thinks. Nicer than anything she’d normally expect out of a shitty Halloween party on Sycamore Avenue full of disgusting teenagers that are all pretty much looking to get laid, really. There wasn’t much to expect from something like this in the first place. After the laughter dies down, and Robin’s choking on a snort, Nancy’s swinging her feet like a happy child.

“You are a _hoot_ while drunk, I gotta admit.” Robin confesses, a smile evidently tugging at her lips as she returns to clean the mascara off her cheeks. The napkin has gotten cool by now, sobering Nancy with its tepidness.

“Don’t think I’m like this while sober?” She tilts her head.

“Pshhh, you? Hell no,” She shakes her head, folding the napkin in two before continuing.

“That’s fair,” Nancy replies, hands going to the counter in an attempt to stop herself from swaying.

“Mmm,” Robin hums, stepping back to get a good look at her. Nancy feels too aware of her existence suddenly, reddening as bright blue eyes rake up and down. Her skin is hot and tingly all over, particularly warm where Robin had placed her arms. Her shoulders, her arm, her neck, her cheeks, her chin. Every part is numb and overly sensitive at the same time.

“Alright! Done.” Robin decidedly says, clapping her hands together and startling Nancy out of her comatose state. She nods and haphazardly gets off the counter, shaky but not as shaky as before. There’s a smile on Nancy’s damn face that won’t leave and she doesn’t know why, but she’s not going to fight it, not when it feels so good. Robin’s mirroring the expression, cheeks dimpling. Staring at it feels infectious, like she won’t ever stop smiling and she’s okay with it.

“How much did _you_ drink?” Nancy queries, head tilting as if it’s obvious that she’s plastered herself, as if Robin doesn’t even need to ask to know just based on her current appearance alone. 

“I think that _you_ ask too many questions,” She retorts, sass in full form.

“Curiosity never killed the cat.” Nancy’s words are getting incoherent again, pointer finger raising as if to accentuate the validity of her sentence. Robin stares at her like she has three heads.

“I’m pretty sure it’s ‘Curiosity killed the cat’, Wheeler.” She states. Nancy opens her mouth, then closes it, opens it again. Decides to shut it.

“That’s what I thought.” Robin chirps, earning a drunken jab on the ribs from Nancy, before continuing, “Ouch, hey! Let’s focus here, brat. My turn to ask a question. Do you have anyone to drive you home, huh?” She asks.

“Brat?!” Nancy slurs, the temporary sobriety that the cold napkin provided beginning to fade away.

“For Christ’s sake, just answer the question!” Robin facepalms. Nancy pouts but tries to think of an answer anyways.

Her mind flickers to the image of Jonathon Byers, shy and observant. Somebody like him would definitely _not_ be here. Even if a prep like Nancy goes up to him and hands over a tacky orange invite, beckoning him to come. She hadn’t seen him anywhere all night. Not in the house, at least. He didn’t smoke as far as she knew, so there was no way he’d been out lighting up, either. He was probably at home studying or helping his mom give candy to the kids that came by for trick or treating, she thinks. 

He’s her only option, really, and aside from him…

Nancy stares at Robin.

“Uh, well… Hm. No, not really.” She scratches her head, internally thanking the heavens above for not getting any fruit punch in her hair. That would’ve been beyond annoying.

“Great.” Robin drawls, the word long and sarcastic-sounding. Nancy purses her lips, feels bad for Robin for the millionth time.

“I don’t live that far, I’ll just—”

“No, no. You’ll probably eat shit trying to walk home like this.” Robin cuts her off, smirking just the tiniest bit. She’s probably imagining her falling in her head. Asshole. Nancy huffs.

“I’m—” Nancy starts to interject with the argument that she’s _so_ coherent and _so_ coordinated right now, but there’s no point to it, she knows. Robin seems to have this strange way of always being right, Nancy’s realized over the sporadic time they’ve spent together. She stops herself altogether and backtracks.

“Well, I’m _not_ going to ask you to drive me home.” She says in a matter-of-fact manner, chin tilting up as if to dare and challenge her with a glare. Robin’s eyes narrow.

“And why is that?” She glares right back at Nancy.

“Because you’re here to party, not to take care of my ass, Buckley.” The fight in her is starting to come alive a second time, trying to protect Nancy from losing yet another verbal scuffle with Robin. It seems pointless, she’ll admit, but the fierce part of her just can’t help itself.

“Look,” She pauses for emphasis, and Nancy hangs onto every word, “If I’m being honest, parties aren’t my scene. I thought that much was obvious. I’m in _band,_ like, come on. And anyways- the person that I came for is too busy fucking someone to care if I leave.” Robin explains, a pungent bitterness noticeable.

“Ah...” Nancy rubs the nape of her neck.

“Yeah.” 

“Uh…” Well, shit. She feels especially bad now. “That sucks,” Is all she can manage to blurt out.

“Guess both of us had crappy nights.” Robin says after a moment of knocking the toes of their shoes together, sighing through a tight-lipped expression.

Nancy smiles sadly at that, lowering her head. 

Silence falls between them. 

The song ends, and now it’s _‘Just the Two of Us’_ by Bill Withers that croons like a soft lullaby. Nancy wonders why the hell a love song is playing at a Halloween Party of all places, but still has to refrain from humming along, inclined to fall into the temptation of such a soothingly sweet song. Robin’s completely quiet across from her, leaning down to massage her sore ankles. As if watching her do so reminds Nancy of the fact that she’s _also_ wearing heels, the faint throbbing in the arch of her foot makes itself known. She was definitely going to regret wearing heels tomorrow. Robin doesn’t say anything, not quite staring at Nancy, but rather staring at the side of her head. 

Nancy doesn’t question the fact that she says person rather than guy, because she’s still drunk, and shit like that doesn’t really matter too much right now.

It feels like the stillness between them is growing more stale and thicker with something unidentifiable in each passing moment, on the brink between awkward and plain uncomfortable, so Nancy speaks up.

“Yeah, you never struck me as the party type if I’m being honest.” She admits to which Robin very tentatively cracks a tiny smile at. The air shifts, and they’re back in familiar territory. Nancy lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

“Well, you’re right about that. Someone like me just doesn’t fit _in_ here.” Robin replies. Nancy’s brow lifts at that. Like me? What was that supposed to mean? Sure, Robin was a bit of a nerd, always one to raise her hand in class and actively be engaged in whatever lessons were going on during the day, but Nancy didn’t think that meant she wasn’t allowed to have fun.

To be fair, though, she’s been conditioned to believe that nerds weren’t all that bad— her brother and his idiotic friends being said nerds in suspect, of course. Although they’d argue that they’re ‘ _geeks’_ rather than ‘ _nerds’,_ which Nancy has never truly figured out the difference between the two. Both will always be the same in her eyes no matter how much Mike groans like she’s just called him something foul every time she says ‘nerd’.

“I think you fit in perfectly fine. You’re just overthinking it is all,” Nancy tries to place a comforting hand on Robin’s shoulder, but misses by a long shot and doesn’t realize it, “Trust me. Most people at these parties are too shit-faced to even actually realize who they’re talking to. You’re just another face in the crowd.”

“...Huh.” Robin says, mentally retaining whatever drunken horseshit Nancy is spewing right now. Her nose scrunches up and her eyes narrow, and Nancy can visually see the gears turning in Robin’s head. It’s cuter than she’d like to admit.

“Prime example riiiight here!” Nancy gestures to herself with jazz hands, a lopsided smile slowly forming on her face. She stumbles a bit while widening her stance, pretends like she’s absolutely fine. Robin laughs at the idiocy Nancy’s decided to emit tonight.

“Wow,” She says between snickers, and really, Nancy’s so happy that Robin’s laughing that she doesn’t care about the fool she’s made of herself, “You’d better hope for your sake that you don’t remember this the next morning, because Jesus Christ.” Her cheeks dimple, head tilting back in yet another snicker. 

Nancy just keeps beaming.

If last-year Nancy knew she’d be in the bathroom at some random Halloween Party, laughing with Robin Buckley about ten minutes after practically admitting she didn’t love Steve, she’d chuckle like it was some kind of joke. 

She was so damn uptight before— always taking it seriously when people poked fun at her, studying until the sun was long gone, never being late or skipping class. Prissy was what they called her. It fit her demeanor pretty well. But now, after everything, she feels like there’s no point in trying so hard when there’s always the probability that Demogorgons might still be lurking beneath the surface, and in the walls, and in the ceilings. Everywhere. Yet she still tries, wanting to regain the familiarity of stressing over a test again. And the familiarity never comes, even when she invites Steve over and allows him to distract her with his kisses and his stupid games rather than studying.

Even so, this feels more familiar than anything else she’s come to attempt trying.

“Yeah, yeah. Enjoy the show, Buckley! You know you’re having fun.” There’s another hiccup somewhere in the middle of her sentence, but the point still stands, Nancy’s shoulders squared with a radiant confidence that only a plethora of booze seems to bring out.

“Oh my God, you absolute dork,” Robin’s mouth is ajar with disbelief. 

“Shh, I am not a dork! You don’t even know me like that.” Nancy retorts, crossing her arms. There’s some truth in the statement, but it doesn’t seem to bother Robin, only egging her on from the looks of it (and by _it,_ Nancy means the way she’s grinning like a Chesire cat).

“I know a dork when I see one,” She says in a sing-song voice that has Nancy rolling her eyes all the way to the back of her head. 

“At least I’m not a nerd,” Nancy insults, sticking her tongue out at her. Robin gasps in fake-offense.

“You wound me, Wheeler.” She looks the part too, hand over her heart, palm over her forehead like she’s truly hurt. Nancy snorts in response.

“Whatever, drama-queen. Since you’ve decided to be my chauffeur for tonight— how’d you get here? Use that big ol’ nerd noggin of yours and try and remember.” Nancy teases, poking a finger at her forehead only to be swatted away in record time, like Robin somehow knew she’d do that. She tries to send an irritated state in Nancy’s direction, but there’s no heat to it, she can tell.

“See, the thing is… I, uh, biked here?” Her voice goes up a pitch towards the end, sounding more like a question rather than an answer. Nancy deadpans.

“Seriously?”

“What, would you _prefer_ to walk?”

“I mean, no, but—”

“Well, no complaints then. I’m your one and _only_ ticket home.”

And with that, any other objection is gone, Nancy’s mouth clamping shut. 

Robin hums, content with her silence, and grabs her by the hand so they can weave their way through what’s probably going to be a much denser crowd by now. 

  
  
  


__________

Her feet are moving for the first time in a long while; it’s sort of obvious in the way she waddles like a toddler behind Robin, who’s not looking back in even the slightest. The door opens, _‘Just the Two of Us’_ still playing. Nancy feels like her whole body is vibrating with the bass, heart thumping along to the beat of every word. It’s a rather comforting feeling that grows as they walk down the hallway, the two of them getting closer to the music. They turn the corner only to be met with a floor full of people.

The crowd is sickeningly corny.

There are so many— _too_ many— couples dancing to the love song, either trying to devour each other with their mouths or practically melding into one with how intimately they’re both swaying along to the music. Nancy feels the urge to puke in her mouth, thinking about how Steve would’ve literally jumped her bones trying to convince her to slow dance with him, because it’d be “romantic as fuck”, in his words— she can hear his needy little voice in her head as clear as day, like he’s actually here with her. Her palms are growing sweaty in Robin’s grip at the thought, but she doesn’t seem to care, slowing down so that they’re side-by-side as they swerve past incoming couples. Her neck swivels and she leans in, hair ticking Nancy’s ear. Damn, Robin was touchy. Was this just an attribute to Intoxicated Robin?

“Ugh, gag me with a spoon.” Robin yells over the music, practically forming Nancy’s thoughts into a tangible sentence, like she can read her mind.

She nods her head in agreement almost immediately, making a ‘blegh’ sound that Robin smirks at in amusement. Her head turns toward the exit in their shared peripheral once more, and Nancy takes her time to scan the faces in the crowd with a lingering curiosity in her head. Robin had come to this party for somebody, and yet they were with another person, probably being one of the mushy gushy pairs dancing right now. The thought that Robin might see them makes her angry. The thought that someone would _ditch_ Robin makes her even angrier. 

Robin is fucking cool! Seriously, Nancy might not have really spent that much time with her today, or honestly, in general, but— she’s still super cool. And anyone that thinks otherwise is downright stupid because Robin’s a damn catch. Nancy comes to the conclusion that they must’ve been an absolute asswipe to ditch her for some other bimbo without braincells. Robin deserves better is _also_ concluded by Nancy.

Nancy squeezes her hand, thumb brushing over the backside of her palm in a sort of silent sympathy. Robin’s eyes flicker from the door to her, expression slightly confused. Nancy holds her gaze, steady, pursing her lips like she’s waiting for her to understand. Robin squeezes back eventually, confusion turning into an expression resembling surprise and a soft vulnerability that makes Nancy’s heart ache.

The two of them look away at the same time, both blushing, for reasons that Nancy can’t really explain, honestly. She just knows that it feels like her entire arm is covered in pins and needles; the room is heavy and hot suddenly, sweltering like they’re in a sauna, rivulets of sweat cascading down her temples. Whatever just happened felt intimate enough for Nancy to swear she was slightly lightheaded as a result.

Just as fast as the moment happens, it’s over, dissipating into the frigid October air.

Robin swings the door open, autumn’s hefty wind almost knocking Nancy onto her ass as they stumble out. Both of their hands drop to their sides. It disappoints her more than she’d like to admit. There’s a few people smoking in the shadowy parts of the front lawn, where no one can make out faces, small groups passing around joints. Nancy wants to plug her nose up at the revolting mixture of weed and sugary halloween candy dancing along in gusts of putrid air. God, that’s a strangely nauseating combination.

“You gonna retch? _Please_ turn around if you’re gonna do that, for the love of God.” Robin begs, her frost-bitten ears peeking through the messy blonde hair that twirls around in the breeze. Nancy bites her tongue, tries to shove any bile at the back of her throat down, down, and away for good.

“I-I think I’ll be okay.” She attempts for a thumbs up, but it probably looks more like a cry for help with the way her hand is shaking like she’s about to blow away in the wind. Robin sighs, reaching for her pockets inattentively as they start to walk down the lawn littered with red solo cups and cigarette stubs. Nancy has to pay extra attention to the ground in an attempt not to trip on anything; or _anyone,_ for that matter.

“Ugh, I’m gonna smell like fuckin’ joints when I get home.” Robin’s grumbling, and Nancy can’t really make out the rest of her words after the part about joints, not over the sound of a car revving past them on the street. Loud and obnoxious. Just like eighty percent of Hawkins, Indiana’s population, Nancy solemnly decides. Guess they like their cars the same way. 

“Wait— do you think I’ll smell too?” She touches her shirt gently, hoping the booze will cover up any other musk. Nancy’s teeth chatter; it's a sound that makes her skull rattle too much for her liking. "And where the hell are we going?” Her questions are neverending tonight. Robin seems to get the curiosity in Nancy piqued. Maybe it’s a drunk thing, maybe it’s a Robin thing. She can’t tell, to be honest— maybe both?

“You want my autograph, too? Didn’t know I was getting interviewed tonight, with all these damn questions.” Robin rolls her eyes, hands holding onto the lower part of her dress, trying to stop it from flapping in the wind. The sight sort of reminds Nancy of Marilyn Monroe.

“It’s not my fault that you never explain shit.” Nancy’s shivering while she speaks, eyes lingering on the red stains. God, it’s so cold. She feels like she did on _that_ night, after Steve threw her into the pool and she’d come out sopping wet with her shirt and pants practically clung onto her with moisture. The smell of chlorine reeked from those clothes for days on end.

“That’s… fair. Touchè.” Robin’s lips press together momentarily, like she’s mulling through the imaginary rolodex of questions Nancy had asked her over the past hour, before turning about face so that she’s walking backwards and looking at her at the same time. Nancy watches her as she crosses her arms behind her back, tilts her head, and grins.

“And if you’re really so curious as to how drunk I am, I think a bicycle ride would be _very_ telling of my drunkenness.” Robin says in that stupid tone of voice that’s all mock-condescending and giddy all at once. Nancy remembers asking her that, just barely, the corners of her mouth curving up into a smile.

“If we crash, I’m stealing your bike and going home on my own,” Nancy proclaims. 

“Wow, you’d seriously leave me for dead? I’d probably be bleeding, all bruised up and everything,” Robin shakes her head and clicks her tongue in disapproval. 

“You are _so_ dramatic. How did I ever tolerate you last year?” Nancy says, trying to hold back a laugh at the way that Robin trips on a stray red solo cup and narrowly recovers.

“I was an absolute angel last year! Right now too, _literally._ ” Her hands go to the sides of her face in an angelic sort of pose, Robin fluttering her lashes like that’s gonna help anything. The halo bobbles back and forth. Nancy can’t hold in her laugh anymore, covering her mouth.

“See, you know I’m right. I’m a kind soul that does nothing but good for others.” Robin says. A red bicycle is sitting behind one of the several parked cars, leaning against the trunk of someone’s Chrysler. 

“Jury’s still out on that one, Buckley,” Nancy remarks to which Robin raises an eyebrow, grin settling into more of a jovial smile.

  
  
  


__________

After a few minutes of acclimating themselves to the bike— and some teasing from Robin over their height difference when Nancy climbs onto the pegs only to realize that she’s the same height as Robin while standing on that stupid thing— they’re off and onto the roads back home. Nancy’s arms are firmly placed on her shoulders, maybe too tightly, but the shadows are starting to scare her again. She feels like she can see things in the corner of her eyes, in the darkest parts of the woods, where things run rampant and people can easily go missing without anyone knowing. She wishes she’d brought a pocket knife or something. 

It really wouldn’t do much against a Demogorgan but it’s still a weapon and Nancy’s a petite teenager with no muscle mass, so. 

Anything would be better than nothing.

She tries to keep her mind off of it by focusing on other things, like the way that the moon is out in full tonight, basking everything in a pale blue color, and the autumn leaves that crunch beneath the tires of their bike, and— okay, fine. If Nancy’s being honest, she’s only been staring at the back of Robin’s head. Her hair looks so nice and soft with the way it shines in the moonlight. She just wants to… she doesn’t know what she wants, really, but she _wants._

Much to Nancy’s surprise, Robin’s coordination is decent, even though she’s been practically running her mouth the whole time. Regardless, she’s still drunk and alcohol is still, well, alcohol— so they run over some branch at one point and almost completely wipe out. Nancy’s concerned for Robin at first, looking at her for signs of injury, but she’s laughing as they cross an empty intersection, shoulders shaking, and Nancy slumps in relief.

“This feels like some sort of fever dream.” Robin babbles. Nancy can barely hear her over the breeze against their ears, hissing and whistling in almost a melodic song, so she leans down to try and hear her better.

“I know right? I’m, uh, glad it was you that found me.” Nancy says without really thinking. She doesn’t cringe or recoil at her own sincerity, as much as she wants to, because Nancy truly missed her. She missed their stupid banter and having a friend— acquaintence— that was a girl. 

It’s so stupid, how she pushed and pushed and kept fucking pushing at her, until eventually Robin’s existence seemed like it didn’t matter to Nancy anymore. She pushed her out of her mind with an unyielding resolution, and whether that was out of fear or something else, Nancy didn’t know. 

Except she _did_ know. She just didn’t want to come to terms with what knowing meant.

Nancy finds it hard to focus on Steve nowadays as a result of… that.

Robin isn’t in her head anymore (although she has the feeling that she’ll be thinking about her a lot more now), but there are so many pretty women in Hawkins, and Nancy isn’t blind. 

She used to see a really pretty girl at the store every once in a while when she went shopping for groceries, with long hair and bangs that nicely framed her face. She wore this glittery eyeshadow that caught the fluorescent lights just perfectly, her green eyes absolutely radiant with shimmer. Nancy always sort of short-circuited whenever she saw her and stopped in her tracks. 

The girl had only ever noticed once, and when she did, she just smirked— like she knew what was up. 

After that, Nancy decided to drive the extra twenty minutes to a different store on the outskirts of town instead.

It’s that fucking instinct Nancy has to just flee, to run away and hide, that ruins things for her everytime. She often lays in bed until the sun comes up and thinks about what life would be like if she wasn’t so afraid of everything and everyone. She stays with Steve because she’s afraid of what it’d be like without him. She runs from the green-eyed girl in a grocery store because she’s afraid that she knows too much. She hides from Robin because she’s afraid of what their friendship would end up being— a friendship. 

Nancy feels like she’s in this weird stand-still with Hawkins, Indiana. 

Everything about this stupid town is scary and she’s _so_ fucking lonely.

“Hello? Earth to Nancy? Did you fall asleep standing or something?” Robin snaps her fingers up at Nancy. She looks down to see two blue eyes staring right back at her, big and beautiful and glowing like moonshine.  
  


“Oh! Um- Yeah, no, yeah,” Nancy chokes on her words, swallowing the urge to part her lips and lean down, “I don’t even remember the last time I’ve seen you. You totally disappeared on me.” She regrets her choice of words immediately.

Robin flexes her hands over the handlebar, the look on her face turning curt. Her breath turns to vapor, swirling away in white puffs. “What do you mean, ‘disappeared?’ You- It’s not-” She huffs, shakes her head, and looks back at Nancy for a single moment.

“Are we friends?”

Oh.

Nancy can’t think of an answer, but thankfully her lips move before she can really come to a decision, in a sharp, “Yeah, I mean- I want to be,” that has her reeling. She squeezes her eyes shut. Is this the right thing to do? She doesn’t know, but she can’t be bothered with things as trivial as her feelings. She just knows that she wants to spend more time with Robin. Her other wants can wait. 

“I…” Robin’s voice sounds uncertain, trailing off before it picks back up again in a resolute:

“Yeah, me too. I’d like that.”

Nancy opens her eyes to the sight of Robin smiling to herself. What an absolute nerd. 

Nancy mirrors the expression with an equally delighted smile.

Friends with Robin Buckley. 

Nancy thinks she’s just crossed over into the other dimension. The better one.

She doesn’t really have time to process that, though, because Robin’s on her ass almost immediately with questions that she seems to have been itching to ask. She isn’t surprised in the slightest.

“Well- if I’m officially of friend status, can I ask what the hell happened? Steve looked like he was going to punch someone’s lights out on his way out the door, but then Billy was all up in his face, and they took their little cat fight outside.” Robin explains, pointedly mimicking Steve’s face in a way that has her chuckling. Nancy finds herself wanting to hesitate and build up that wall she’s had between her and every other person in her life, but she’s so tired of building things that are repetitively broken down anyways. Building a foundation is better than building a wall.

“It was stupid. I was wasted and I’ve just been having a, uh, shitty month?” Nancy backs up slightly, realizing her lips are a little too close to Robin’s ear, “Actually, scratch that- it’s been a shitty year, I guess. I only stay with him because he's safe. Not a risk, you know? But he just reminds me of my problems and my- what’s been eating at me lately. I told him what we had was bullshit, basically. Everything. Our relationship. Bullshit, all of it. I don’t know when I stopped loving him, I really don’t.” Nancy pours her drunken heart out to Robin, who nods along like she’s listening to every syllable out of her mouth. Seeing her so invested is enough for Nancy to have to blink away tears. 

A new anchor has found its way into Nancy’s hectic life and she couldn’t be more thankful.

“Wow, that’s… that’s a lot.” Robin says after a moment of processing, eyes wide. Nancy snorts and squeezes Robin’s shoulders; a silent reassurance that she’ll be okay.

“Well, you asked, didn’t you?” Nancy jokes.

  
  
“Mhm. It’s my obligation to listen as a friend.” Robin says, looking way too serious for Nancy’s liking. She can’t decide if she should laugh or cry. She smiles instead, leaning down to rest her forehead on Robin’s shoulder.

“Thank you.” She whispers. Robin leans her head against the side of Nancy’s cheek. 

“You say that too much, Nancy.” She quietly replies. Nancy feels her cheeks warm at the change in name. They’d called each other by their last names ever since the first day, when one of them made a stupid joke about the other’s surname— Nancy can’t remember who said what anymore. All she can fathom right now is that this is the first time Robin’s said her name.

“Sorry, Robin.”

Quiet falls upon the night.

On the rest of their ride back home, they occasionally pass a few younger trick-or-treaters on the sidewalks going home, some sitting on the curb to distribute and trade their candies among their friends. Nancy watches them in passing, still leaning on Robin. The last time she’d dressed up for Halloween was three years ago— Nancy was dressed as one of the twins from The Shining. Barbara was the other twin. They both hadn’t cared if they looked nothing alike. She had fun walking around with her and another girl in their grade, Lucy. 

Nancy hums _‘Just the Two of Us’,_ the song somehow having gotten stuck in her head while they were passing through the crowd and it was playing deafeningly loud. It’s a quiet thing, barely audible, but Robin picks up on it and hums along in a similarly soft tone after a long moment. They’re so close that Nancy can feel the vibration of Robin’s humming in her chest and all through her body. Her insides are aflame with bliss, the warmth coursing through her body.

This feels so intimate, so private. A secret for no one else to hear.

Nancy wants to hide this from the rest of the world. 

It’s a moment that spans out into nothingness and everything all at once, swallowing up the world and time until Nancy can’t tell if they’re even moving anymore. She can’t hear the breeze, can’t hear the dead leaves crunch beneath bicycle tires, can’t feel her stain growing colder. 

This is her sanctuary, Nancy decides. 

This is the normalcy that she can grasp and cling onto, when nothing else will, when everyone else leaves. 

Robin is her sanctuary tonight.

By the time they reach her house, Nancy’s practically asleep, forehead still resting on Robin’s shoulder. The brakes screech to a halt, and they’re both still humming, not moving for a short while. It’s with a soft nudge that Nancy whines but still clambers off the pegs of her bicycle, trying to rub the deep-seated fatigue from her eyes. She might actually get some sleep tonight, which is a surprising feat in it of itself.

“How are you gonna get in?” Robin asks, tilting her head. She looks as tired as Nancy feels, eyes so close to shutting that they’re barely open. She yawns, hand going over her mouth. Nancy simply observes as she searches her pockets for her keys.

“I guess I’ll just go through the door. I’d normally hop onto the roof, but.” She can barely get the sentence out, voice groggy and thick with the desire to lay down and not get up until next week.

“Yeah, _don’t_ try that. You barely made it out of the damn house earlier.” Robin snarkily says. Nancy rolls her eyes and smiles.

She decides to admire, one last time, before Robin leaves her with her thoughts and her sobriety the next day.

Robin’s hair is standing up everywhere as a result of the wind in complete disarray, her bangs swept back. The makeup on her face has long since faded after enough sweating and biking, freckles much more prominent now. Nancy fights the urge to run her thumb over every individual mark in admiration. She seems to be staring right back this time, gaze unwavering, unlike before. Her face is tinted blue with the moon’s light. Her eyes shine a brilliant blue and white. They look like heaven, like the sky at its brightest hour, when the sun peeks through the clouds. Robin is the epitome of angelic tonight.

“Good night, Robin.”

“Good night, Nancy.”

Nancy thinks of red lips and blue eyes in her dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> robin finds herself talking to people she'd never thought to have interacted with prior to letting nancy into her life. things change, people change, places change. robin wants nancy in a way she's never wanted anyone before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo! here i am, once again.
> 
> unfortunately, i didn't proof-check this very well, so if there are any errors then that's my bad.
> 
> enjoy! :)

Robin thinks about Nancy a lot.

It’s sort of hard to think in general, lately, between her band practice and the AP classes that are quite literally suffocating her with continuous due dates, and everything else that comes with high school. The bullies, the parties, the drama. Robin’s seventy percent sure that the moment her foot’s in the doorway of Hawkins High, her brain turns off and goes into auto-pilot immediately. She’s not really surprised by that realization.

But— when she finishes everything that needs to be finished, and there’s no one to bother her about shit she hasn’t gotten around to doing yet, Robin finds herself pondering about that night over and over again, replaying the vague memories in her head like some kind of film tape.

There’s always this strange train of thoughts that occur whenever Nancy pops into her head. It starts with her contemplating over her short curls and her eyes that seem to relentlessly search for something in Robin that even she doesn’t know how to find. She thinks of her lips, of her comforting touch, of the way Nancy’s humming gets stuck in her head for days on end.

Then, she thinks about if she likes her, and things go downhill after that.

It’s a perpetual cycle that’s gone on for months now, looming over the dreary February mornings in Hawkins, where the ground has frozen over with dewy rain that turns to ice.

Robin doesn’t like Nancy. She just can’t.

So she decides to like Tammy Thompson, instead.

It isn’t a great alternative, because Tammy’s still a girl, and she’s still heterosexual, just like Nancy— but it’s okay. Anything, anyone is better than Nancy, who makes Robin feel a way she’s never felt before in her life. Nancy gives Robin just the tiniest sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, she isn’t the only queer in Hawkins.

That in it of itself is too much for her.

__________

It’s a Friday today, thank dear lord. Robin _needs_ the weekend. Her whole body is aching for it, desperate for some solace amidst the piercing cold that mid-winter weather brings. There’s dirty grey slush-snow in the parking lot, littered with trash and cigarettes, and the sky is tinged with stormy hues, the kind of smoky color that lets you know snowfall is inbound, the kind that makes you wish you’d brought a scarf with you this morning. Everything’s blanketed in a bleak filter of grey and lifelessness, Robin notices. Even the red shirt Nancy’s wearing today.

So, all in all, a normal winter day in Hawkins.

Robin sits on the steps of their school’s emergency exit, the door propped open with a brick, a cigarette between her lips. She hums, exhales after a moment, watches the smoke mix with her breath in an intermingled amalgamation. The heel of her boot presses down into fresh snow, crunching beneath her feet, and she sighs.

By the time she’s halfway done, someone’s calling for her from inside, but she can’t really tell who, so she decides to turn the other cheek in a deliberate sort of ignorance. She can’t be bothered right now. Her chest feels tight, as if it’s wound up and ready to snap, and she doesn’t know why. A car skids by in the parking lot, the grey slush scattering behind their tires.

Sometimes she wonders when things got to be this way.

One moment, she’s thirteen years old, making a snowman with her older brother, deciding it was the best day ever. And then she blinked, let herself get lost in the neverending nightmare that was adolescence, and things turned out like this— with her sitting on some damp concrete steps, smoking a cigarette while worrying over what her mother would say about her steadily worsening grades. What combination of words she’d use to get Robin stuck in her own head about how shit she is.

She shrinks in on herself till she feels small and unnoticeable amidst the vast emptiness around her. Robin’s corduroy jacket is warm and soft, something so unfamiliar in the painfully relentless winter that seems to never end. It’s an ugly dark brown, the color reminiscent of rusted bronze. Her necklace dangles off her neck as she leans down, inhales another shaky breath, lets the smoke fill her lungs. The tip of the cigarette is engulfed with red, lighting up her face in a pale scarlet, just enough to ensure that there was still warmth left in Hawkins, somehow, someway.

“Can I bum a smoke?”

Robin almost jumps out of her skin with surprise, a loud yelp getting caught in her throat. Nancy laughs, a single hand over her mouth, and Robin’s too captivated over her mere existence to smack her in the shoulder like she normally would’ve.

They haven’t spoken since Halloween.

Even though Robin was sure that they were friends, she didn’t know where they stood at all anymore.

There were different categories of friends, after all. School friends, best friends, childhood friends. Nancy didn’t lie in any of those categories. She was an anomaly, some sort of irregularity in Robin’s life that she couldn’t comprehend no matter how hard she tried to. The way she carried herself was prissy and put-together, and so it was easy for her to meld into the school’s population, yet she’d actively decided to befriend Robin of all people.

Robin didn’t get it. Something wasn’t adding up.

Robin had been too afraid to speak with Nancy the Monday after Halloween, in the end, mortified that she’d call her a dyke or a faggot; terrified that she’d act as if the entire night with her never happened. That hope within her would’ve been pulverized, above all, and that would be a crushing blow that Robin wouldn’t have been able to deal with. Her deep-rooted fear that she was truly the epitome of an outcast in a town like Hawkins, Indiana would become solidified.

Nancy hadn’t spoken to her either, her nearly obsolete attendance becoming a gaping hole in Robin’s November. Her disappearance in school was beyond confusing and out of nowhere. Steve was gone, too. Eventually she’d been back in early December with doe-brown eyes that seemed scared of every single person that spoke to her or looked at her or got too close to her. It was a sight that bewildered and worried Robin all at once. She gave off the demeanor of a skittish baby deer, one to flee from everything that even remotely resembled peril.

Robin ended up deciding Nancy probably needed the space, and kept her distance for a while, even though she hadn’t understood why.

February Nancy looks considerably better. Much more healthy, much less zombie-like. It’s a sight that made Robin’s cheeks ache with a smile that refuses to leave her face. The sensation is embarrassing albeit she wouldn’t trade it for the world, not when Nancy smiles right back with a content gleam in her eyes that’d been snuffed out back in November.

“You’re so damn quiet, jeez! I couldn’t even hear you behind me,” Robin huffs.

“Dramatic as always, I see.” Nancy rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling with that soft smile, the kind that’s barely noticeable unless you really look. Robin hates herself for the way she stares at her face a little too long, a little too captivated. Yet Nancy is staring right back, wringing her hands nervously before sitting down next to Robin, their shoulders brushing.

“Since when do _you_ smoke?” Robin lifts a brow, the soft reddish light from the cigarette beginning to fade away.

Nancy doesn’t open her ostentatious mouth, for once, and takes the cigarette from its former spot dangling between Robin’s fingers. The ash at the end flutters away, onto the concrete and the patch of snow beneath their feet. Robin tries so fucking hard to not look at Nancy, but she just can’t help herself, not when they’re thigh-to-thigh. She can feel the heat radiating off of Nancy in soothing ripples. Her skin is pale, if not paler then it was in October, and it almost looks like she’s glowing as she lifts up the filter up to her lips.

Robin leans in, watching. Nancy tilts her head up and takes a long drag.

She thinks about how Nancy had tilted her head up in the same exact way that night and let Robin’s fingers travel across the vast expense of her neck only a few months ago. She thinks about how Nancy had such soft hands compared to her bony hands strained from twelve years of playing the flute. She thinks about how Nancy had whispered in her ear as they rode in the night, hidden by shadows resembling secrecy.

Nancy is dangerous for Robin. She’s sure of it.

“What? Is there something on my face?” Nancy blinks at her, letting the smoke out with an exhale. Her words are shaky, clouded by the musk of what Robin thinks death must smell like.

“Huh? Oh- uh, no,” Robin struggles to come up with an excuse for her observant stare, pursing her lips.

“Yeah?” Nancy says, lips quivering, and Robin can’t tell if she’s holding in a laugh or a cough— but then she caves in and lets out a nasty sounding wheeze. Robin cackles at her.

“Yeah. You definitely don’t smoke.” Robin says. She watches her stub out the grimy cigarette against fresh, white snow. There’s ash on Nancy’s red shirt, right beneath her collarbone.

“You got some, uh...” She points to the tiny splotch. Nancy brushes it off, her nose and cheeks rosy from the cold. Robin thinks she’s never seen someone so beautiful in Hawkins until now. Her eyes can’t leave her face. God, she’s so far gone.

“Well,” Nancy leans in, biting back another smile, “Aren’t you gonna ask why I’m _really_ here?”

Robin’s eyebrows furrow in thought. She bites her lip, realizing that she probably seems a little thrown off by Nancy’s sudden reappearance in her life, and tries her best not to blush at the fact that Nancy notices.

“Sure. Why, oh why, are you gracing me with your _lovely_ presence?” Yeah, that’s more like Robin. Sarcastic and brunt.

“There she is!” Nancy chirps, pokes at the snow beneath them, the snowflakes sticking to the sleeve of her coat.

“So are you gonna—”

“Explain?” Nancy finishes her thought, smile dissipating into more of a familiarly thoughtful expression, “I just, I don’t know. I wanted to talk to a friend, I guess?” She retracts her hand from the snow, rubbing her palms together for some semblance of warmth. Robin catches sight of how cold she seems.

Slowly, Robin opens her palm to Nancy.

Nancy glances between Robin and the palm outstretched before her, eyes widening, before placing her hands in her waiting palm. It's silent for a moment as Robin processes the way she moved without even thinking, the tips of her ears bright red. The two of them stare at each other in a transfixed look.

“I’m sorry,” They say at the same time.

Nancy’s eyes are impossibly wide now, looking at her in disbelief.

“You—”

“No, I—”

Robin smiles. Nancy laughs. They appear to be on the same page, jumping at the chance to mend things, even at the expense of the other’s apology. It’s enough for both of them to understand, to realize that there’s nothing in the way of their friendship now.

“You know, you don’t have to have a reason. To talk to me, I mean.” Robin runs her fingers along frigid hands that seem to twitch in her grasp, hesitant and overtly fidgety all at once.

“I—” Her left arm retracts, leaving only one hand for Robin to envelope in her warmth. Nancy clings onto the material of her coat, eyes averting. Her knuckles turn white with how hard she’s clutching, Robin notices, her thumb tracing along the wrinkles in Nancy’s palm. Robin knows that look, sees how there’s some sort of struggle going on in that pretty little head of hers, and squeezes onto her palm just once. It’s enough for her to look up from their intertwined hands, after a moment of uncertainty, and give Robin a defeated smile.

“I know,” She says.

__________

Robin has never itched for a smoke as bad as she does at this very moment.

It’s the last day of school, and for some peculiar reason, Robin is forlorn over it. For once in her lonely, stupid life, she’s almost sad to leave this shitty school for the summer. This school, with its rusty lockers and grimy tiled floors, with its cliques and inner circles, with Nancy Wheeler roaming its halls.

After their talk on the steps of the school that one day, hands intertwined, the two of them began to meet at the same spot at least twice a week. They didn’t have any classes with each other again this year, which fucking sucked, but God was it nice to just sit and smoke while Nancy ranted about how Mr. Howard was such a prick and had his head so far up his ass that he couldn’t ever take criticism from his students, and—

Yeah. You get the gist of it.

Robin loved those days. There’d often be times where Nancy was already there with her bookbag in her lap, eyebrows pinched together, disgruntled expression fading away whenever she’d notice Robin’s arrival. Robin would sit down, grin her dorkish grin at Nancy, and nudge their shoulders together. Then there were other times, where Robin would jiggle her foot nervously and take desperate drags from her cigarette until Nancy flopped down next to her, thigh-to-thigh like always, and offered a pat on her back. It made Robin temporarily forget what had been bothering her, every single time.

She’d be lying if she were to say that her heart didn’t clench and drop in her chest every time they touched. She was just so… so invigorated by Nancy’s existence. Nancy lit up sparks in her chest, fireworks, crackling and buzzing with an immense warmth that made her brain stop functioning.

But she doesn’t want to talk about that. Not now, not ever. Those feelings will go away eventually, she’s sure of it.

Robin doesn’t want to ruin what they have, even though school’s end is already shattering the foundation they’ve built up.

Robin fumbles with her lighter as she walks down the halls dispersed with students and teachers alike, talking, hugging, saying their respective goodbyes. She doesn’t care for that right now, too caught up in navigating toward the door that led to their spot. It wasn’t just Robin’s spot, not anymore. The thought makes her heart flutter with something dangerously close to endearment and _definitely not_ yearning, for Nancy.

She pushes the thought out of her head, takes a deep breath, and opens the door.

Billy Hargrove is sitting on the steps, cigarette between his lips as he digs around in his pockets.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Robin mutters, and fuck, did she say that out loud?

He whips his head around, quick as hell, like he hadn’t expected a random chick to waltz out here of all places. Which is ironic, really, considering this is Robin and Nancy’s place and not his. But of course, Billy’s the new king now, so everything is his. She desperately wants to tell him to fuck off.

His expression flickers, stuck between annoyed and angry, before it settles on that charmful face he always wears as a facade.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a lighter, would you, sweetheart?” Billy croons in a disgustingly insincere voice.

Robin pukes in her mouth a little bit. “Why don’t you go ask one of your lackeys?” Her hand retracts into the pocket of her jeans, jaw clenching.

“Do you, or do you _not?_ ” He drops the facade immediately, looking like he’s two seconds away from stomping off and punching a hole in the wall. She wouldn’t be surprised if he does. He seems like the type to.

Robin purses her lips and narrows her eyes, thinking for a moment, before sinking down onto the steps alongside him.

“Yes,” She says, slowly, to which he leans in a little and waits expectantly for her to take it out, but she’s not done talking quite yet, “But! You gotta scram after you finish your cig.” Billy glares at her, probably thinking she’s some kind of weirdo for not trying to get into his pants right now, which is— fair. She’d be sort of expectent of random women dropping their panties for her if she was Billy Hargrove, too.

He huffs, just once, and rests his chin on his hand like he’s bored.

“Fine. Take the damn lighter out then.” He barks at her. She rolls her eyes and reaches in her back pocket for it, the two of them still staring at each other with narrowed eyes. Robin cannot believe she’s about to sit and smoke with Billy. What in the fuck is going _on?_

The flame at the end of her lighter flickers to life, and with it, so does the smirk on Billy’s face. He leans his cigarette into the lighter and stays there for a little, until the filter is lit up, and backs up to look at her again. She grimaces and takes a cigarette out, trying to ignore his weirdly straight-on gaze.

“Why d’you want me to leave so damn bad?” So he’s dead-set on talking. Of course he is. Robin rubs her left temple, feels a headache coming on, lets her cigarette catch the heat of the lighter’s flame.

“Because. A friend is coming soon, and I just don't want—” She pauses and gesticulates to, well, him, before continuing, “You here. That good enough of an explanation?” Robin inhales deeply.

“Can’t you guys just fucking leave? I was here first.” He does the same as her and inhales, lets the smoke come out through his nose. She snorts just a bit, thinking he sounds like a damn child with the ‘I was here first’ schtick. True maturity he’s putting on display.

“What?” Billy catches onto her snort and crosses his arms.

“What, what?” Robin echoes.

“God, you’re annoying.”

“I have no clue how you get any pussy in this town with that shitty attitude.” She drawls, veins pulsating with rancor. God, this guy is a _prick._ All Robin wants is to smoke and see Nancy and go home.

Billy chokes on the smoke in his lungs, coughing a bit, before looking at her and slowly grinning.

“You have got one hell of a mouth on you, I’ll give you that.” He tilts his head up and cackles. Robin notices bruises on his knuckles as he leans back, the red gnashes painful looking. There’s a bruise on his jaw, too, just barely noticeable. It must be hidden by his mullet most of the time.

The gears in Robin’s head turn. Hm… she’d have to save her questions for later, down the road. Her gut tells her that asking Billy outright would most likely _not_ end well.

“Thanks, I guess,” She tilts her head, unsure if what he had said was really a compliment, at least by Billy’s terms.

“ _Not_ a compliment,” He smirks, demeaning and stupidly smug. Ah, well. Guess not.

“Look. Trust me when I say this, spaz. The bitches here are—”

“Spaz? Are you fucki—”

“—Easy as hell. Shitty attitude or not, I'll always find someone, somewhere.” Billy glares, licking his lips, except there’s a bit of emptiness to the galled look in his eyes. He sort of looks like that when he’s flirting with girls, too, giving them bedroom eyes that are always somewhat deprived of something Robin could never put her finger on. She sees it when she passes him in the halls often.

It makes her head hurt, wondering what that might mean, but she tries not to dwell on it.

“Girls always want to fuck the assholes,” Robin mumbles into her cigarette. Like bees to honey, she thinks.

“Don’t forget that you’re a girl too. Just like the rest of em’ too, I bet. ” He snarls, looking unimpressed with their conversation.

If only he knew.

Honestly, she’s a little surprised with Billy’s lack of… she can’t quite put her finger on it. Irritation? She thought he’d be more snappy with her, or he’d just outright refuse her compromise and spread his legs like a dickwad just to claim his territory, but he seems to not care that much about Robin or her presence. People like Billy never take kindly to Robin, who’s stubborn and candid and headstrong, not taking shit from most people.

Yet he seems to not even notice. Billy isn’t acknowledging her relentlessly bothersome nature, and he isn’t calling her a queer either (like his type normally do), staring intently at the parking lot adjacent to the stairs instead.

She stops talking, following his stare.

He doesn’t even seem to register her, filling the silence between them by hurling half-baked insults at her that she isn’t phased by, most likely assuming she’ll just reply with retorts and wimpy cries of protest. Shitbird, spaz, bitch, bimbo. None of his words apply to Robin and she knows it, remaining mostly undaunted, following his line of sight until her eyes land on Steve Harrington.

Robin reflexively rolls her eyes at the mere sight of him, with his wild hair and his expensive looking clothes, taking another puff of her cigarette. She watches how Billy gazes onwards as he drums his fingers on his knees. He’s sitting there, grunting out sentences mindlessly between exhales of smoke, his chin on his palm.

She distinctly remembers them on Halloween, Steve’s fist twisted into Billy’s shirt, forming a knot, their faces inches apart. Billy had laughed in his face after Steve snapped at him and pushed him onto the ground before leaving. Billy followed him and it confused Robin immensely, especially after Steve was back in late November with a black eye and rumors that Billy was the one that caused such a monstrosity on his normally okay-looking face, and yet after Halloween he looked perfectly fine. None of it aligned.

And despite their history with one another, despite all the _confusion,_ she doesn’t see any malice in Billy’s eyes as he watches Steve. She sees something uncanny and jaded instead.

Robin purses her lips, unsure and unsteady.

Surely, he isn’t…

But what if he is?

“Will ya stop fuckin’ playing with that lighter?” His eyes, blue and full of fire, are on her suddenly. Robin glances up at him, and he’s still looking, _watching,_ eyes lit aflame with something unrecognizable. He knows she’s been watching him.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. His eyes threaten her, wordlessly, firm and on the verge of something that almost scares Robin.

But Robin doesn’t think someone like Billy Hargrove would do anything to her. Especially if her guess is correct. She’d technically have leverage on him, after all. Not that she would _do_ anything with said leverage.

She opens her mouth, lifts the cigarette out from between her lips, and clears her throat.

“Billy, do you—”

“Sorry I’m late! I left my History textbook in my locker and I had to go back… and, um...” Nancy’s sentence trails off as she realizes that Billy is sitting next to Robin, sending an incredibly violent glare in her direction. Nancy smiles with wide eyes, jerking her head toward him as if to silently say _‘why is he here?’_ which, really, Robin can’t explain even if she tries.

“This your friend, shitbird?” He asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, staring at Nancy similarly to a predator looking at its prey. Robin doesn’t like it, not in the slightest.

“Nancy Wheeler, right? Steve Harrington’s ex. I have _no_ clue how he managed to snag someone as pretty as you!” Billy changes his demeanor instantaneously, winking as he stands up to shake her hand.

Nancy sort of just stands there, beyond confused, limply shaking his hand. “Yup, that’s me. Nice to, uh… meet you!” She tries to sound relaxed but it comes off as more tense than anything.

Billy’s gone in a flash after introducing himself to Nancy, as if everybody in town doesn't know the asshole’s name already, hell-bent on striding to his Camaro immediately. He probably doesn’t want to be seen with Robin or some shit. Whatever, she can’t find it in her to care. 

Nancy’s eyes follow him for a little while, face contorted with incredulity. She turns to Robin and sits down, noticing that she’s already started smoking with Billy.

“What was _that_ about?” She asks, cheeks puffed out in disbelief. Robin feels the urge to run her hands through Nancy’s newly permed hair, all curly and soft-looking, but decides against it in the moment.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Robin huffs.

“He’s sorta off-putting, isn’t he? I can’t put my finger on why, though.” Nancy hums, eyebrows pinching together. She has that look on her face where she’s trying to figure out something that’s probably unsolvable, yet she’s still trying, because Nancy is Nancy and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least make an attempt.

“Yeah. He is.” She agrees, silently gazing at his Camaro as it pulls out and blazes off in an impatient fury down the road.

Robin has a hunch that she isn’t the only queer in town. It's not just a hope anymore— it’s a hunch. A hunch that seems uncertain yet abundantly clear in her mind’s eye.

__________

Steve Harrington is strange.

He’s strange, but not in the way that Robin is. Robin knows her kind quite well, and Steve is nowhere near her kind of strange, but he still emanates a demeanor that reeks of weird and awkward and maybe a little dorkish. It’s almost endearing, the way he stumbles with his words pretty often, the way he seems to get himself into the most stupidly hilarious situations daily.

And then there are the other times, where his typical Steve Harrington behavior gets him (and her, by extension) into circumstances that make Robin want to bash her brains out on the counter.

“Were you thrown down a flight of stairs as a child?”

Robin stares at Steve, disappointment in her eyes, as he slips on the spilt ice cream. It’s all over the tiled floor in a goopy, greenish-brown puddle, and now their break room smells like Mint Chocolate-Chip ice cream and _ugh,_ did Robin mention how much she doesn’t like Mint Chocolate-Chip? Steve’s hands wave around in that dramatic way that they always do whenever Steve trips or stumbles (which is surprisingly often) before he clasps onto the table for dear life and regains balance.

“You know, you could’ve just gone with the good ol’ ‘dropped on the head’ saying, but you had to go and say _that_ instead, didn’t you?” Steve wipes the soles of his shoes on the floor as he speaks, eyebrows furrowed. Robin is two seconds away from internally combusting.

“Dingus, dingus, dingus!” She chants angrily, pacing back and forth, “You spilt our fuckin’ ice cream everywhere and that’s your main concern right now? God, just—” Robin takes a deep, deep breath.

“Oh, come on! It’s not like the Mint Chocolate-Chip flavor is popular, anyways! I’m pretty sure the only people I’ve seen get this shit are old people and like, Mike. That kid is a goddamn freak, I’m telling you. Never in my life have I—”

“Steve.”

“—Met a kid that likes Mint Chocolate-Chip. I bet he’d fuckin’ argue with you, too, if you told him it was the worst ice cream flavor. Which it is! Just as stubborn as—”

“Steve!”

Steve flinches, like he’s just realized Robin was even speaking, looking up. Robin frowns.

“Oh, sorry. I was, uh, going off again wasn’t I?” He grumbles, reaching for a stray box of tissues on the counter.

Robin doesn’t really know what to say for once.

They’ve worked together for about a month or so now. Robin supposes they’re in that weird place between friends and acquaintances, where she was with Nancy last year, that place where everything can change with a simple word or joke or reassurance.

This weird place, where she’s friends-but-not-really-friends with someone, always makes Robin anxious; like she’s on a thin sheet of ice above a lake, and it’s about to crumble from beneath her.

Sometimes being an observative person sucks, and this is one of those times, she thinks. Despite them not quite being friends, Robin can tell whenever Steve’s having a bad day pretty easily. It’s not hard to tell when she takes his prominent eyebags— and his weirdly long rants about pointless stuff— into consideration. Today’s one of those days, but it’s not too bad as far as she can tell. He looks like he’s slept, at least. Still, his mouth is running a thousand miles per hour, and Robin doesn’t know why.

She finds that she _wants_ to know why. She _wants_ to let him lean on her. It’s a thought that makes her queasy and nauseous, because wow, she wants to help Steve Harrington of all fucking people.

Steve, the guy that dated Nancy Wheeler for a year. The guy that had a shot with the girl she’d dream about, the girl she’d cry over sometimes, when the silence was deafening and all she could hear were her own thoughts at midnight. The girl she inwardly knows she’ll never have a shot with. It doesn’t matter now, though.

Robin wants to be petty, to turn the cold shoulder, to act like she can’t see the way he gets shaky when he’s not busying himself with tasks or conversations or anything, really.

She just can’t get herself to, though.

“Mike’s a dickwad... he made me sneak him into the theater, this one time you weren't on shift." Robin wants to barf at the fact that she knows their names by now (and by ‘their’ she means Mike, Lucas, Max, and Will), but she brushes her disgust aside, crouching down alongside Steve to help.

Steve momentarily gawks, probably because he can’t comprehend someone is dealing with his bullshit, and Robin mentally pats herself on the back as she watches him loosen up.

“Seriously? I can’t believe you let those losers in without me here. What a softie you are!” He teases, tossing her the tissue box. She barely catches it in time, too caught up in sending a glare his way.

“Oh, shut up! You’re the one that treats them like they’re your children, anyways.” She retorts, scrubbing the mess. Thankfully, it’s morning, and the mall is never crowded during the earlier hours. No one would interrupt them for a while.

“Fuck off, it’s too early for your jabs at me,” Steve complains, but there’s still a grin on his face, like he’s asking for more. Robin thinks that’s all the invitation she needs.

“You know, I don’t have to be helping you, right?” Robin deadpans, serious, yet not-serious in the way her eyebrows are twitching and her facade is crumbling at the edges. Steve narrows his eyes, looking like he can’t decide between being thankful or being annoyed. He settles for both, barking out a gruff 'thank you' that’s awkward and heartwarming in the strange way Steve always is, before continuing to talk about Mike’s unwaveringly resolute love of mint-chocolate chip ice cream.

Robin listens for a while, interjecting occasionally with a joke or a wisecrack that Steve returns with vigor each time. Soon enough they’re practically wheezing on the floor of Scoops Ahoy after their conversation eventually derails toward how bad Tristan Campbell must smell. She doesn’t know how things had eventually gotten to be this way around Steve, she really doesn’t but God, she wouldn’t trade it for the world. Jealousy aside, Robin doesn’t dread coming into work solely because of Steve.

Steve and the way he makes lame attempts at flirting with girls in a sailor uniform. Steve and the way he flounders whenever someone he knows comes to Scoops Ahoy (aside from the children, of course). Steve and the way he walks her to her bicycle every damn day after work even though she’s 5'9 for Christ’s sake and no one’s gonna try anything.

He’s just… great.

She hates him for that, but she likes him for that, too.

“God, no! Rob—”

“—I’m telling you, dude! He smells like fucking goat cheese and garbage juice!” Robin says between gasps for air, throwing the last of their napkins into the trash. Steve laughs so hard that he has to kneel, knocking his head into the counter on his way down.

“That’s- I _refuse_ to believe that!” He guffaws, shaking his head.

“I swear on my _life._ If he ever comes in here, you’ll see for yourself. Or should I say smell for yourself?” Robin grins like a Cheshire cat, snorting loudly when she sees the light leave Steve’s eyes.

“No, no, no, no…” His mouth is ajar, wide open with disbelief, and Robin is convinced this is the funniest conversation she’s had all month, “If he comes into Scoops Ahoy, I’m not- I can’t serve him. Nope, nuh-uh!”

“Why not?!” She gasps, leaning forward.

“I’ll laugh in his fucking face!” Steve looks dead serious. Somehow that makes it even funnier to Robin, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Steve joins in, unable to control himself, mouth still ajar.

“Okay, fine. That’s an understandable concern. How about… I don’t tell you that it’s him until he’s gone?” Robin’s shaking her head, already dead-set on making this hypothetical situation a reality. Steve looks absolutely terrified and amused all at once.

“That’s…” Steve’s voice dies in his throat. She counts that as a small victory, humming. Maybe they should have a whiteboard for her victories, too.

“Now, I just need to figure out how to lure him into Scoops Ahoy…” Robin thinks aloud, rubbing her chin.

“Whoa, that’s so unfair! You can’t just lure him into—”

“Ah, ah, ah! You never said that,” She waves her finger in his face to which he rolls his eyes.

“I hate the fact that I have to specify what you can and can’t do...” His head falls, the sign of a man that’s given up trying. Robin pumps her fist into the air, maybe a little _too_ enthusiastic about her success, but she just can’t find the room to care.

“Hell yeah!” Robin claps her hands together excitedly. He smiles, warm and all sappy-looking, his cheeks dimpling, even though he’s been defeated by her all over again, and the sight makes her smile right back. She likes when he smiles; it makes her feel a little less concerned, a little more hopeful.

Steve is okay. She’s certain about it in the same way she’s certain about the sky being blue. And if he struggles a second time, to be okay, she’ll be right there to help in the same way he has. It’s just how their dynamic seems to operate. Yet as corny as it is, Robin thinks it's something she’d be marginally less happy without.

She’s here for him, and he’s here for her, and it’s okay.

“You’re out front first today, right?” He asks, pulling her out of her thoughts. Robin, still slightly dazed and a little stirred up inside, blinks at him a few times.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sure, dingus.” She waves him off with a dismissive usher of her hand before trudging past the door toward the counter, Steve’s laugh following her with a muted echo.

Robin doesn’t mind this time of day. It’s always slow and relatively boring, with only the occasional cluster of people shuffling in; rarely ever does a line actually form. Sometimes she brings a magazine and just sits down (on a chair she’s dragged from the back) to read. Today its slipped her mind for some reason, and so she’s forced to lean on the counter and pray that her feet won’t be too sore afterwards instead.

Her eyes dart along the sailor-themed patterns on their walls, tacky and navy-blue with some yellow mixed in. She huffs through her nostrils, looking past their entrance into the food court. Erica hasn’t claimed her spot yet (thank God) and the tables are sparsely populated with a few lingering customers.

As she watches, though, her eyes catch a flash of bright red hair. Ah, it’s Maxine (or rather Max, since the little shit is so insistent on everybody calling her that). An even brighter outfit embellishes Max’s already loud and eye-catching appearance, her shirt a shade of blue that matches her eyes. There’s a bag in her hands, and Robin can’t really make out the brand of it, too caught up in pondering over why she’s at the mall so damn early.

Max seems to catch sight of Robin in her peripheral as she walks, raising her hand to wave politely. Robin’s sort of surprised, considering that she normally has the manners of a twelve year old boy, and they’ve maybe had like two actual conversations, but waves back with a lopsided smile anyways.

Robin wonders at what point in time she decided to actually interact with Steve’s gaggle of children. They’re not around often, so there isn't really much opportunity for interaction anyways, but occasionally one of them will stop by for no particular reason. Max in particular reminds her a lot of herself when she was younger, overly rambunctious and loud and maybe a little bit too blunt. Despite that, she’s a good kid, and from what she can tell, they are all.

Robin finds enjoyment in her job— but she’ll never admit it’s because of Steve Harrington and his posse of kids.

__________

“Any new flavors this week?”

Robin stares at Erica, who’s standing with her clique, hip jutting out.

It’s the second time she’s been here over the span of five hours.

Robin lets out a groan of absolute pain and agony. Customers look at her momentarily, their stares boring holes into the side of her head.

Today has been unexplainably shitty.

Steve’s out today on a sick day since he’s _apparently_ down with a bad case of influenza, which is bullshit. She’d called him and he sounded perfectly fine, no coughs or sniffles, so she pried because Steve was almost never out for _any_ reason, and he’d dejectedly told her that his dad was dragging him along for some business trip in an attempt to try salvaging Steve’s hesitance about his future.

And, well, Robin couldn’t exactly ask him to tell his dad to screw off, since he had sounded despondent and just about hopeless, so…

Here she is, alone, scooping ice cream.

Robin doesn’t know why today is so draining and so hard. She really doesn’t. Nothing that bad has even happened— no one spilled anything, no one argued with her at the counter, no one really spoke with her today aside from the usual ordering around. _No one._ Steve’s gone and she has no one to… to— she doesn’t know. To acknowledge her existence, maybe?

Her life, consistent with neglect and being ignored, is full of not being acknowledged. Robin thinks that if she’d gone missing for a few days her mom wouldn’t notice, and if she did, she’d say good riddance. And then there’s school, full of people that don’t talk to her unless it's about band or homework or pointless shit. Her only friends used to consist of the nerdy guys that sat with her at lunch and talked to her but didn't _talk_ to her.

Robin doesn’t get acknowledged. Her existence is fleeting, one of a shooting star, something that fades into nothingness after its brightest hours, when she’s bold and blazing. And then there are days where she’s fading, like today.

She’s having a bad day, like Steve was, a few days ago.

The realization makes her wish he were here with her. She doesn’t know what to do with that.

“...We have Fruit Punch Palooza, Peanut Butter Chocola—”

“Ooh, fruit punch? Yes, puh-lease!” Erica exclaims.

Robin sighs, closes her eyes for a moment, and takes her metal scoop out.

Surprisingly, Erica’s gone pretty quickly after trying the fruit punch flavor and calling it ‘disgusting as hell’, which relieves Robin to endless extents. She slouches against their ice cream display, relishing in how cold the glass is against her numb limbs. She’s going to have to clean her handprints off the glass later. Her eyes slip shut, a deep-rooted fatigue taking hold of her, clawing beneath her veins and in her eyes.

But then the bell rings.

Her eyes open to the sight of Nancy.

Robin can’t hide the swell of heat to her face, a blotchy red color overtaking the normally pale color beneath her freckles. She’s wearing a salmon pink dress adorned with small floral patterns scattered along its expanse, a few ruffles apparent near her exposed shoulders. The cut of it is deep, but not too deep, yet it’s still _too_ much for Robin to process after not seeing Nancy for a month. Her cheeks are rosy with blush and her curls are messy with remnants of the summer breeze outside. There’s a twinge in her wrists— the urge to reach over and cup her face in her hands presses on Robin in the form of a flutter in her stomach that sits there and throbs relentlessly, yearning and wanting and pining.

Robin takes a deep, deep breath and lets it sit in her chest. _Get it together, get it together, get it—_

“Cute uniform, Robin.” Nancy does that thing where she tilts her head down but still smiles and gazes through her long lashes.

Robin’s brain is going to shut down. Maybe it already shut down, she can’t tell anymore, she’s too distracted by the lip gloss Nancy’s wearing anyways.

“Uh,” She clears her throat, trying to go for an unbothered reply, “Thanks. So what flavor d’you want?” The warble in her voice betrays her almost immediately.

“Hmm…” Nancy hums, narrowing her eyes. Did Nancy call her cute just now? Robin’s brain is struggling to catch up with what’s happening honestly. “Just cherry, please.”

“I didn’t take you as a cherry sort of gal.” Robin blurts, feeling out of breath for some reason, but then she realizes she isn’t properly doing her job, so she adds on a sloppy, “Cone or cup?”

Nancy practically grins, tilting her head. “Cup. What did you take me for, then?”

“Strawberry, maybe.” She watches as Nancy snorts and shakes her head in a disapproving manner. “Coconut?” Nany’s shaking her head again, and Robin laughs shakily, feeling less unhappy already.

“You’re getting further and further, Robin,” Nancy snorts.

“Seriously?” She steeples her fingers over the metal scoop and digs into the Cherry ice cream, bright red and tangy and one of the easiest flavors for Robin to scoop because it’s so soft, which reminds her of Nancy somehow. Nancy’s a lot like cherry ice cream.

“You know what? It makes sense that you’re a Cherry gal,” Robin says, eyebrows raised.

“How come?” Nancy asks, eyes lit up with a curiosity that seems to never fizzle out, leaning forward over the counter just a bit.

Their fingers brush as Robin hands her the cup. There’s a warmth that spreads from her fingertips right down to her feet in daunting waves, but she tries to get a grip on herself, a little too concerned over how she’s feeling because of only their hands touching. _Pathetic,_ she thinks. Even for Robin, a queer who always gets dangerously attached to the few girls that come into her life, a queer who doesn’t have any female friends anymore (besides Nancy since she just can’t help herself when it comes to her) because she’s too scared of what such a thing might conjure— it’s still pathetic.

She shrugs at Nancy’s question, offering a worn out smile.

Nancy rolls her eyes as she reaches into her wallet, “What, work has you that tired?” She hands over a few bucks, pushes around the Cherry ice cream in her cup with her spoon, takes a big spoonful into her glossy mouth, “I’m surprised! You always had so much on your plate back in school, and even then you did pretty well.”

Robin swallows dryly and smiles, pinches the inside of her wrist. Her brain wants Nancy to leave, but her heart is pounding, and she isn’t really sure what that translates to, “You know I work with Steve, right? Harrington.”

“Oh. Wait, for real? He works here?” Nancy wipes her mouth with the inside of her dainty wrist, eyes wide. Robin doesn’t know how she hasn’t figured that out. They were still friends at the very least, weren’t they? Steve must’ve told her at some point.

“Yep. I’m pretty sure he accounts for like, at least fifty percent of my stress daily.” The other fifty percent was standing in front of Robin, in heels and a beautiful dress, but she wasn’t exactly going to admit that out loud.

“Makes… sense.” She tentatively sets her ice cream down.

“Trust me. You don’t even know half of it.” She sighs, running her hands over her face.

Nancy stares at her for some reason, steely and observative, and Robin can feel herself getting hot under the collar again. But then her eyes turn soft, the way they used to be whenever Robin would get too upset or peeved about something and just stopped speaking, back when they’d sit on the steps of the school. Robin knows what that stare means.

“I’m okay, Nancy,” She smiles, her face feeling tight.

She’s okay. She’s fading away but she’s okay.

Nancy’s silent, hand flexing over her wallet. Nancy knows not to push it, at least not right now, in Scoops Ahoy.

So she smiles back instead, but her brows are furrowed, and Robin just knows she’s going to try and get more out of her eventually. She doesn’t give up, of course not.

Maybe that’s why Robin’s initially so shaken up by Nancy’s presence. Nancy emits a loud, inquisitive, demanding existence. She’s bold and fierce yet still somehow kind in the way she seeks out the things she wants. Someone like her sets Robin’s acknowledgment of existence aflame. She acknowledges her _own_ existence. Robin doesn’t get how she does it so easily.

“Robin…” Nancy bites her lower lip, glancing around at the empty parlor save for one random chick on her way to the garbage can with an empty container in hand. She sighs, pulling out a crumpled five dollar bill, “I guess we both need a talk, huh? I miss those steps.”

“Me too.” Robin quietly says, tonguing at the inside of her cheek. “Wait, both of us? Are _you_ okay?” She watches as Nancy tries to straighten the wrinkles out of the bill, mouth downturned.

“I’m fine,” She assures.

Robin sighs, crossing her arms. Nancy’s voice sounds flat, overly guarded in its tone, and she knows something is up. She looks up at the analog clock above their entrance doors, silently noticing her shift’s end. Perfect.

Today feels different, abruptly. Dull, yet unrefined, like Robin could turn her indescribably shitty day around if she really tries. Nancy’s probably why.

“Do you wanna talk, then?” Robin asks.

“Wh- Now?” Nancy’s biting at her lips. Robin notices how her foot bounces and how her jaw clenches. She’s definitely not doing alright. The faint demeanor of anger is radiating off her in pungent waves, thick with irritation and jagged words at the very edge of her tongue.

“Yeah, now. My shift is over, I just need to close up. You can wait, right?” Robin weaves her fingers through her hair, chipped nail polish crumbling away as she picks at them uneasily. The two of them seem to be on two different spectrums of discontent right now— it’s quite easy to notice when looking at Nancy and seeing the wrinkles in her forehead, sizeably creased with an ill temper. She wants to smooth out those harsh lines with her hands like Nancy’s skin is made of clay, moldable between her fingers.

She jerks her head at Robin stiffly, and it’s more than enough.

It doesn’t take very long to clean and lock the store up, her main issue being the handprints on the ice cream display, but after that it’s smooth sailing from then on. The two of them walk along various stores, their bright neon displays catching Nancy’s attention. Robin doesn’t even spare a glance though. She’s seen them hundreds of times on her way in and out, but Nancy is far more interesting, and so she simply stares at her face being lit up in a variety of glowing colors.

“...’ve never been here before. I haven’t had the time.” Nancy mutters, eyes glittering. Wait, what did she say? Robin fills in the blanks rather quickly, pursing her lips.

“Mhm,” She can only manage to get out a hum of acknowledgement, too enthralled in her own thoughts, the words escaping before she can help them, “You know, we really have to stop meeting like this.” Robin huffs quietly, an exasperated expression sitting on her features.

Nancy grimaces, brushing her hands over the folds of her salmon colored dress, before sighing. “I know…” Her mouth tightens into an unreadable guise, “I’ll give you my number, then.”

Robin blinks at her a few times, gazing in a dazed incredulity. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Nancy laughs, like Robin’s just told her some kind of joke, and honestly? Robin cracks a smile at it, even though she’s had a shitty day, even though her heart is racing and her palms are disgustingly sweaty right now.

“I mean it, Nancy!” She smacks at her shoulder all the while her little snorts haven’t let up.

“I know, I know! Jeez, so dramatic. I’ll just have to visit you at work more often, then.” Nancy scrunches her nose, the tiniest shit-eating grin on her face.

Robin snickers at that, at the confidence in her smile and in her eyes, shaking her head as she opens the front entrance to Starcourt Mall. The cacophony of rain pounds heavily outside, coating everything in a noticeably torrid dampness. Summer rain always seems to do that. The rain is warm and the air is thick with humidity. There’s a thickness to everything, even the sky, who’s orange tinge is muted with miscellaneous clouds. Robin thinks she can probably swallow the air if she tries, frowning at the realization that her hair would get all frizzy.

Her eyes glance over toward her bike, drenched with the downfall.

“Need a ride?” When Robin looks back at Nancy, she’s staring at her bike, seemingly having followed her frustrated stare directed at the bike rack.

“If you don’t mind,” Robin tilts her head, eyebrows raised.

“I’m just returning the favor.” Nancy folds her hands behind her back and smiles. Halloween, huh? Robin hadn’t ever thought of it as a favor, not at all.

“Sure.”

__________

Robin sort of can’t believe they haven’t seen each other for a month, really, because it feels like not a single moment has passed since the last time they’d spoken.

The stereo in Nancy’s car is playing some old 50’s hits, the vintage sound dancing gently through the air with a solemn sort of comfort that makes Robin wish for fall to return again. It’s always so humid and so damn sunny lately. She wouldn’t mind the short days, the chill in the autumn air, the familiarity of the cold. She wouldn’t mind saving Nancy from another shitty party (or another shity boyfriend, for that matter) in October all over again, either.

Her shirt is damp, and Nancy’s hair is moisture-laden, their intermingled pants heavy with the aftermath of sprinting through the rain with their arms interlocked. This feels nothing like fall, so divergent from the moon’s pale blue luminescence back then; it’s warmer now, even though it’s still somewhat raining. The sun is peeking beyond the clouds, slivers of sunlight touching upon Nancy’s complexion, giving her brown hair an ethereal glow.

“So,” Robin breathes out, “What’s with the get-up?”

Nancy turns her head unhurriedly, the lines of her face etched with amusement. “What about it?”

“I mean- I’m just curious! You’re all… dolled up.” She loosely gestures at the rosy cheeks and the shiny lips and the heels. Nancy quirks a smile, but it crumbles away, a frown replacing her mirthful appearance rather quickly. Robin pauses at that, mirroring her expression.

“I got an internship at Hawkins Post.”

Their conversation unravels at a natural pace, Nancy grabbing at the steering wheel and clinging onto it as if it’s a lifeline as she vents, never once stopping to take a breath. Robin practically gets angry on her behalf just based on her description alone, pressing her lips together. Eventually her release of frustration is over, and she slumps onto her dashboard in a quiet whine-whimper. Robin’s rubbing tiny circles into her back, gaze fixed on her as she comforts and then insults all at once, spewing indignant quips towards the idiots at Nancy’s job that have her slowly reigning herself in again. It takes a while, but she’s back soon enough, exhaling a hearty sigh.

“It’s just—” Another long exhale passes through downturned lips, “I tried telling Jonathon about it, about how I feel like _shit_ every time they demean me, but he just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get most things. I don’t even know why I’m dating him. I really don’t, Robin.”

Oh. Well, that’s new.

Robin sucks in a breath, fast and quiet. “Well, maybe you two need a break?” She hopes that isn’t too much for someone like her to advise of Nancy— shit, is Robin being selfish?— yet it doesn’t seem like it is, considering how she worries her lip between her teeth and glances away.

“I… Maybe. I don’t know.” She shakes her head slowly, seemingly still in thought. Robin doesn’t know what to say; she’s opening her mouth, and nothing is coming out, mind too barren to conjure a proper thought. She knows that she’ll be upset over this later, but right now that feels irrelevant in comparison to the concern that’s surging forward in Robin’s chest. The poor girl looks like she’s gonna combust with how hard she’s thinking.

“You’re gonna give yourself a headache, Nancy. Relax.” The hand on the small of Nancy’s back drops, and she leans back, almost like she’s missing its presence. Nope, definitely not that. Robin’s just searching for things that aren’t there, isn’t she?

“Rude.” She huffs, crossing her arms. “It’s your turn.”

“My turn?” Robin stares stupidly. Nancy stares back, unmoving. “Oh! Uh…”

She doesn’t really know how to explain why her day sucks. This is one of those sort of unexplainable things, where even if Robin tried her hardest to form a comprehensible sentence, it would all still come out like a jumble of ill-defined misery. The rain pitters and patters onto the roof of Nancy’s car, unrelenting in its downpour, the droplets cascading across every window. Robin moves her lips and starts to speak, and nothing comes out except for a few miscellaneous words, so she has to clear her throat and try again.

“Today is just… there’s, like… fuck. I don’t- I can’t-” It’s embarrassing to even think about why she’s feeling how she is— for more reasons than she feels capable of untangling and deciphering to Nancy. Robin thinks it isn’t just the vulnerability of it anymore, but the fact that Nancy doesn’t have to care about the acknowledgment of her existence in the way that Robin does without even realizing it some days. Maybe neglect does that to you, Robin doesn’t know, but too long without interaction really makes her clam up and feel as if she’ll just lose sight of everything that makes her… her. The passion, the nerdiness, the happiness, the love, the—

“Robin.”

Robin gasps quietly, returning in dull waves, the sensation as though she were drowning pressing on her. Her chest is tight, tight, tight. Nancy gazes at her through her elongated lashes, holding onto her shoulder firmly, and the touch pulls her back to shore within a moment's notice. She gapes down at Nancy, who’s frowning.

“You’re really worrying me,” She softly says.

“I’m…” Robin stops herself. “This will pass. I promise.”

“You promise?” Nancy echoes her.

“I do.”

Just like that, Nancy’s leaning in to hug Robin without a second thought, and it’s an awkward thing, the two of them hovering over the gearshift uncomfortably, Nancy too small and frail to really get a grasp on her and her broad shoulders, but Robin couldn’t care less. She hugs in return with just as much urgency, her eyes glazing over with tenderness and love, genuine love, something of both the platonic and romantic kind. Overwhelmed, Robin clings on.

Nancy tucks her head into the nook of Robin’s neck.

The two of them don’t move for a lingering moment, long and tender and soft, something that leaves a burning hole where her heart is. In due time, when Robin feels she’s considerably soothed by the smell of Nancy’s perfume, fresh and a tad bit tangy, she slowly withdraws her arms and straightens. There’s a dull ache in her back from the way they’d both slightly bent over to reach one another, barely noticeable amidst the flutter of Robin’s stomach when Nancy leans the side of her head on her shoulder.

This is different then their conversations during the school year, beneath feathery white snowflakes, by their school’s dirty parking lot. This time it’s hazy and fuzzy and so warm. Robin can’t recall her discontentment anymore, too focused on how Nancy’s exploring the shape of her hand with her own, as if she’s trying to map it out in her mind. She catches her eyes, and they both smile at one another. Her qualms are silenced.

She doesn’t need to talk it out. This is okay. This is more than okay.

“So, what’s your number?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, nancy has a car! they needed one for the sake of this storyline, and robin is only seventeen so... yeah :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nancy searches for sanctuary again, and in the midst of her search— she comes to the realization that her feelings for robin are real, scarily real, and it's too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii!!!
> 
> so sorry for taking longer then i normally do to update. its been a very busy month for me, between holidays and end-of-year assignments, but im finally here :)
> 
> happy holidays, everyone! rest well.

Nancy’s tired of fighting.

If she reflects on it, really _ponders_ over the duration of her last few months— all that would come to mind is fighting. She fights for the faintest _inkling_ of respect at Hawkins Post, day after day. She fights to keep her withering relationship with Jonathon alive. She fights night-terrors in her sleep, daily. She fights and fights and fights. And for what? For whom? All that’s left anymore after the fighting is her, relentlessly unhappy and tired and alone, staring at her ceiling every night in an ineffable silence.

She doesn’t know what to do anymore. It’s like she’s stuck in place all over again, but it’s so different now, so unfamiliar, yet still the same in the worst ways.

Jonathan and Nancy had just argued not even thirty minutes ago. She finds herself reminiscing over it and wanting to put her head in her hands. Her lip quivers. He reminds her of Steve, and the familiarity of it makes her nauseous. Fighting with boyfriends seems to be a recurring thing for Nancy. She hates it.

The argument initially started out one of their usual finicky, high-wired conversations, where any slip-up from either of them easily meant every sense of stability would be lost within an instant. Nancy’s walking on a tightrope when it comes to Jonathon, one foot in front of the other, her gaze set on the path before her. She doesn’t look down, because she knows if she does, all she’ll see is the inevitable end to their relationship. And so she continues to walk instead. Slowly, barely moving, she tries to keep going.

Step by step. Day by day. Hour by hour. Nancy takes it little by little, yet somehow, it still seems like falling off the tightrope is inescapable.

There’s a dry, thick feeling in the air that wraps around Nancy and seems to take hold of her, choking every breath until she’s just about gasping for air— or maybe she’s just crying, Nancy can’t really tell. She certainly doesn’t feel as though she’s crying. All she feels is an anger, so deep-rooted and sharp, so seemingly unsolvable. A pathetic sound slips out, something between a cough and a weep. 

“Fuck!” Nancy whimpers. God, does she feel pitiful.

She thinks this fight might be the fall. 

Nancy doesn’t know if she’s falling, now, as she drives over to Starcourt Mall, her heel pressing on the gas feverishly. 

She doesn’t know if she’s falling as she locks her car and strides toward Scoops Ahoy without a second thought. She doesn’t know if she’s falling as she dashes down the escalator, weaving past the crowds of people wordlessly. 

She can’t feel the fall. 

All she can truly _feel_ is the urge to just see Robin. She doesn’t want to vent, doesn’t want to hug it out, doesn’t want to do any of that. She wants her, just her, and the ache of it almost hurts with how it sits there in her chest. It’s not a realization, by any means; she’s realized it for a while now. 

She’s certainly falling, but not off the tightrope.

Nancy wants something she can’t get, for the first time in her life. It’s ironic, considering the fact that Jonathon says she gets everything handed to her on a silver platter. They’ve stayed together for a long time now, and funnily enough, for the same reasons she stayed with Steve as long as she did. He has a sense of comfort about him. Maybe it’s because he pulled her out of the Upside-Down — maybe it’s because they’ve shared trauma in a way that no one else on Earth possibly has. 

She finds comfort in his presence, in his nightmares, in his worries. She doesn’t know if it’s a selfish thing, to find such solace in his weakness, but she just can’t help herself.

She makes him feel less strange. 

Yet, so does Robin, and despite them not sharing any trauma, she thinks she might prefer the solace of her weakness to his. 

Now, _that’s_ a different realization.

By the time that Nancy reaches the Food Court, the ankle straps on her heels have come undone with how frantically she’s walking over, hair puffy and sticking out in every direction. There’s a faint hitch in her breath— she can’t really tell if it's fatigue or the warning signs of incoming tears— but it doesn’t slow down her pace in the slightest. She’s across the court in a matter of a minute, after just barely avoiding a collision with some random guy holding onto his soda for dear life.

When Nancy reaches the entrance, Robin’s stood there, humming along to the tune of the radio playing in the shop, tapping her feet as she cleans the counter. She’s swaying her hips and nodding her head, unwilling to acknowledge that there's a person staring at her.

Same as always. 

Nancy loves that (loves _her,_ maybe).

Quietly, she makes her way to the counter. Robin looks up at the sound of heels clicking against tile, grinning when she sees who’s before her, and Nancy’s heart soars just a little bit. Her grin quickly disappears, though, when observative eyes catch sight of the _little_ things. The ankle straps, the frizzy hair, the makeup. Her brows furrow.

Nancy shakes her head. _‘It’s okay. I don’t want to talk about it.’_

Robin leans forward, her fingers brushing against the palm of Nancy’s hand. _‘Are you sure?’_

She nods, just once. _‘I’m sure.’_

A sad smile finds its way onto Nancy’s face, despite the fact that she knows she’s the striking image of a mess all over again. Just like the Halloween Party, sitting there on the floor. Robin seems to be the only one that gets to see the mess that is Nancy Wheeler. Without words, she sees it, she understands it. She thinks that she’d be happy letting Robin see all her ugliest parts. 

“Cherry?” Robin asks, smiling back.

  
  
“Sure.”

  
  
  


__________

  
  
  
  


It’s been a week since Nancy's last talk with Robin, and she’s half-convinced she might go crazy if that time prolongs itself any longer.

Let’s get things straight, though. It’s not because Nancy is smitten by her (lie), and it’s not because she misses her, either ( _another_ lie); it’s just that so much has happened lately and she’s had no one to talk to it about. 

The investigation that Nancy and Jonathon have been chasing after, with the diseased rats and the fertilizer, has been going absolutely nowhere. In the words of the dickwads at Hawkins Post, at least. Always disregarding her efforts. She isn’t even upset anymore, she’s just mad and so, so frustrated at the fact that no one’s spoken out against them. Nancy’s watched Jonathon turn a blind eye to their remarks and their insults and their stupidly immature pranks out of fear that speaking up would cost him his internship many times. Occasionally, he’ll beckon to her feelings with a half-hearted attempt of comfort, just because he feels _obligated_ and doesn’t understand how she must be feeling, especially when this job is so important to their transcripts for college. 

His attempts make her feel worse, unsurprisingly. 

Nancy seriously thinks that the only time he puts himself in her shoes is when they’re talking about their jobs, and he mentally checks out just to imagine how nice it’d be to have a posh home, how great it surely must be to not ‘struggle’ or ‘worry’. Every day they drift further and further apart. The trauma that binds him to her grows more stale the longer that passes, silently, and the two of them choose to ignore the rift growing beneath their feet. It's a sad, hopeless thing.

Nancy curls her hands around the cyan telephone cord hanging off her nightstand, the coils wrapping along each finger. A crumpled note lays in her lap, the edges having been straightened out after unfurling the paper, and on it is Robin’s number. Nancy smiles, almost like its instinct to enliven at the mere thought of her, as she traces a thumb along the jagged scribble of practically incoherent numbers. She can just _barely_ make anything out. She has to squint and turn the note at an angle, but truth be told, she could care less. It’s oddly fitting, how messy Robin’s handwriting is. 

Nancy really, really wants to call her.

She just wants to hang out, maybe, kind of. Shoot the shit, hit the town, have some girl time. Nancy doesn't care _what_ they do, as long as she sees her again, but Robin isn’t working today, and so there’s no excuse for Nancy to come floundering in for Robin’s attention at Scoops Ahoy like the love-sick teenager she is. (Honestly, she’s been spending _way_ too much money under the guise of buying ice-cream for Mike just to see her lately. The asshole thinks that she’s possessed by the Mind Flayer all because she’s been ‘too nice’ to him lately.)

Her hand slowly inches towards the telephone, eyes wide-set with fear and anxiety and excitement lurking beneath all the hesitance, fingers beginning to input the numbers on the rotary dial.

“Six… Four… Two…” Nancy repeats, eyes darting from the note to the rotary dial with a speed unlike ever before, almost out of fear that the phone might disappear if she averts her gaze too long.

She manages to get to the final few numbers, yet as she’s hovering over the last nine, she can’t find it in herself to call.

They’ve never truly hung out with one another outside the margins of work or school. The revelation scares Nancy for some reason. She can’t help thinking that if they were to meet outside of their confines, outside of everything and everyone, then it would solidify Nancy’s feelings in a way that’s almost too _real_ for her to comprehend. It would be like Halloween, weirdly close and too much yet not enough, all at once, and above all, it would be a sanctuary all over again. A comforting, lovely, terrifyingly enthralling sanctuary. Nancy’s breath gets shallow and heavy just thinking about how close they’d been to one another throughout the night.

She doesn’t know if she can handle that.

The thought of the two of them, alone, inebriated and within arms reach is… alluring. Like something forbidden, something Nancy knows isn’t good for her, yet she just can’t keep her hands off of the prospect of it. She wants to breathe in the smell of rose perfume, sweet and relaxing, wafting through the air with an intoxicating ease.

Nancy craves to indulge herself in Robin's presence.

Her consciousness strays, slowly, with trepidation, to a place she hadn’t ever believed her mind could wander to before. She’s never thought of Steve or Jonathan like this, so deeply and profoundly, entranced with the images in her head of creamy soft skin and pink lips melding into her own, Nancy imagining the feeling of Robin’s smile imprinted against her own as they kiss. There’s a dull ache in her abdomen, a tightness that’s familiar but pressing, urging her deeper into her imagination.

With a shiver, Nancy tries and desperately fails to reel herself back in, only for her train of thoughts to be completely shattered by a loud shriek from downstairs— it resembles a scream right out of a horror movie. 

Nancy’s down the stairs in a matter of seconds after falling off her bed with fright (and stubbing her toe on the nightstand in the process), blazing through the house with an insufferable anger that only Mike could possibly mirror with his own agenda of boundless prepubescent angst and turmoil. How dare he disturb her daydreams about Robin with his girlish screams? 

Her fists clench at their sides as she rounds the corner, and just as she catches sight of Mike, kneeling on the floor in front of an item she can’t make out, she bumps right into something— no, someone? Nancy can’t really discern anything at first, too engrossed in her blind rage, but once she backs up she realizes that Will is standing there with a slightly alarmed look on his face. His hands are both tightly clasped together, rigid and unmoving. Her eyes narrow.

“What?” Will blinks at her as though he isn’t clinging onto whatever’s in his hand like it’s life or death. Nancy lets out a sigh of agony.

She remembers when they were still just children, practically living in their basement and playing D&D every day. What she wouldn’t give for them to regress into innocent kids again. Things were simpler, then. Will seems to be the only one that’s still clinging onto his younger quirks and traits anymore (aside from Dustin).

After a moment of debate, Nancy decides to have mercy on Will. She stares at him expectantly. He seems to know what the stare means, and scuttles into another part of the house, sighing with relief.

Nancy watches him go off, and when she whips her head around to give Mike a death stare, she finds four pairs of eyes rather than one. 

Max and Mike don’t even seem to notice her presence, the two of them bickering with markers in their hands. Max tries to snatch one of them out of his hand, but he retracts just in time for her to miss and fall over instead. He snickers while she writhes about with red cheeks. Same as usual, then. Eleven is staring at the blue smudges all over her fingers, eyebrows pinched together in the way they always are when she’s figuring something out. Lucas is sitting on their recliner with the most determined expression that Nancy thinks she’s ever seen on his face, all the while picking at a scab. Her face falls.

God, teenage boys are disgusting.

“What the _hell_ was that scream?”

They all collectively jolt at the sound of her voice, low and full of malice. Eleven slowly lifts a blue hand to wave at her, an awkward smile on her face. Mike and Max glance over at each other, and without a word, point to Lucas, who’s gone as stiff as a statue with what Nancy assumes is embarrassment. Her eyebrows raise. Eleven glances between everyone with an observant stare, as though she’s watching a show.

“What the hell, guys?! You’re gonna rat me out at the drop of a hat?” Lucas cries, face visibly flushed. Max covers her mouth, but they can all still hear her cackles, barely muffled by her hand. Mike shrugs, like he’s done nothing wrong ever in his entire life. The three of them talk over each other to varying degrees.  
  


Her toe aches, reminding her of the utter pain she’d gone through earlier after hitting the nightstand— and just like that, she’s lit aflame with anger again. “Shh, shh, shh!” They snap to attention once more. “Just- you- What happened? I don’t care who did what! You scared the _shit_ out of me!” She jabs a finger at Lucas.

“Oh, you won’t _believe_ this—”

“Shut up, Max! I swear to—”

“Lucas, stop! She’ll break up with you agai—”

“You scream like a girl! Th—”

"One. At. A. Time." Nancy yells over the group, stunning them into a slightly surprised silence. 

“A wasp flew into the house. Lucas screamed… like a girl.” Eleven echoes Max, a smile gently etching onto her face. Max heartily laughs and high-fives her. The two of them grin as Lucas sinks into the recliner in defeat. 

Mike turns to Nancy. Nancy stares at him, and he stares back, an eyebrow arched. She mirrors the expression, and slowly, the two of them huff. Rarely, once in a blue moon, they share a thought. Now is one of those times, where both of them seem to be thinking ‘everyone is an idiot’. Although Nancy thinks he’s a part of the ‘everyone’, she'll let that portion of her thought slide, just this time. She can’t help getting a tad bit soft when they agree on something for once.

  
  
Eleven and Max seem to delve into their own laughing fit of sorts after Eleven manages to get blue on her nose. Lucas has turned away from the group, huffing and puffing his way past the fit of irritation he’s gotten himself into. Nancy sits herself down next to Mike, who looks surprised that she hasn’t left like she usually does. 

They don’t have the best relationship, and she knows it. They argue, they fight, they disagree. Nancy thinks the hardships are what form strong bonds and longevity. He knows she’s here for him, even if they might not be on good terms a lot of the time, and she knows it too. It’s beyond corny, though. Mike would revolt if she ever actually _said_ any of that. 

“So, where’s the bug?” Nancy inquires, eyes traveling along the expanse of the living-room curiously.

  
  
“Will offered to take it out instead of killing it,” Mike explains. 

Sounds like Will. She hums, thinking about his enclosed hand as she looks down at the empty banner in front of Mike and everyone else. There’s a few miscellaneous markings on it, varying colors strewn about the paper. Nancy flips it over to see that the other side is even worse. Of course. She rolls her eyes.

“We’re making a banner for Dustin’s return home, but everyone was disagreeing on what colors to use, and…” He trails off, jutting a thumb at the banner, “This happened.”

Nancy chuckles, offering a shrug. “Honestly, you can’t see it from afar, if that makes you feel better?” Mike frowns and crosses his arms.

“Not really.” He responds shortly, as always. She doesn’t think anything of it, pressing her lips together. Maybe… 

“I might have a banner in my closet, somewhere...?” Nancy turns to him, tilting her head. He seems to respond much more at that, eyes lighting up. A smile flashes across his face, genuine and modest in its size, and Nancy can't remember the last time she's seen him smile like that. She smiles back.

  
  
“Really? That would be awesome if you did!” He nods overly enthusiastically. 

“I’ll go check, then.”

Rather than bickering with Mike, Nancy ends up helping him when she finds an old banner she ended up never using for a project. 

She wants to be annoyed about wasting her time on something this stupid, but she can’t find it in herself to feel like that, not when she ends up having a pretty enjoyable time making fun of Mike’s handwriting with Max. Eventually, they end up finishing the shabby-looking banner that somehow seems to be the best thing in the world to both Eleven and Mike— and Lucas, who refused to admit it because he’s as stubborn as a mule— and the group rides off with their bikes by sundown. 

As the door closes, and Mike’s yelling his last goodbyes to them, Nancy finds herself in the same predicament she was in prior to rushing downstairs angrily.

Robin and the prospect of calling her to get together still consumes her consciousness. Nancy flops onto the loveseats, her eyes fluttering closed. Thinking about her is tiring in it of itself, somehow. An arm goes over her face, shielding her from the sun coming through their translucent curtains. What should she do, what should she do… 

“You look like you’re gonna throw up.” Mike says. She jolts, removing an arm to stare at Mike with an expression embodying pure annoyance.

“Gee, thanks.” She drawls. He laughs, settling on the seats opposite of her. 

“For real, though. Don’t throw up on the carpet, cause Mom would—”

“I’m not gonna _throw_ up!” Nancy exclaims, sitting up. 

“Kidding, kidding!” He guffaws, hands over his stomach. She blinks at him with a deadpan look on her face, not amused in the slightest.

As the laughter settles down, and he barely manages to compose himself, he continues on, still slightly grinning. “What’s with you, though?”

Nancy pauses at that. 

She can’t exactly say what she’s really thinking, because: A, she has a boyfriend, Jonathan. B, telling him the full extent of the situation would make it very clear that she’s falling for a woman. There’s not really much she _can_ do. 

The idea of simply lying to him and then retreating into her room to hide from any inquiries Mike makes crosses her mind, and she mulls through the safety that comes along with hiding her problems, like she normally would with him. They just don’t have that sort of give and take; really, she can’t remember ever leaning on him during times like these. He was sort of just there, when she struggled, being a sort of silent support. She didn’t mind it. This wasn’t the same at all.

Still, at the core of it, Nancy knows she can trust him. That, and she legitimately can’t think of anyone else to go to with this, which is sad albeit true. The longer she holds this in, the more she’ll fall apart, and the more she’ll dwell on her feelings. A defeated sigh escapes. She leans back, trying to think of a way to word her problems in a less problematic light.

“Uh… there’s, this… friend, of mine.” She slowly says. He nods, unphased by her hesitance. Nancy is surprised that he actually believes her bullshit, but continues, “And he- he wants to ask this girl to hang out, right? But he’s never really, _truly_ hung out with her. And he has… feelings, for the girl. So he’s worried that the more he gets to know her, the more he’ll like her.” She haphazardly refrains from continuing, worried that she might have already given him too much as is.

“Well, what’s wrong with him liking her?” He gazes at her head-on, unwavering.

Nancy clears her throat. How is she supposed to explain this when the guy is really a girl and the other girl is a _heterosexual?_

“Um… uh…” She vaguely gestures at nothing, trying to formulate a sentence, “She’s dating someone else. She’s been dating him for a long, long time. He thinks they might never break up, and he doesn’t want to fall for her when she’s already one-hundred percent, without a doubt, committed to the other guy.” Yeah… yeah, that should explain it, right? 

Mike still seems unphased, resting his chin on his palm now. “If he likes her— like, really _really_ likes her, then he should wait.” Nancy opens her mouth to interject, but he hasn’t finished yet, “You should take risks for the people you like. No matter what.” 

Wow, since _when_ was Mike such an expert on love? Nancy stares at him, perplexed.

He sees the blatant bewilderment on her face and offers an explanation. “Steve said that to us, once.”

Nancy almost laughs at that. It makes _too_ much sense that Steve said that. Him and his stupid romantic antics.

“Sounds about right.”

“He’s such a loser sometimes.” Mike shakes his head. She lets a chuckle slip out at that, and he looks amused, crossing his arms. 

A long silence falls between them, uncertain and contemplative. 

“I think... I’m gonna tell my friend to call her,” She quietly says.

  
  
  


__________

  
  
  
  
  
  


Today is one of those days where Nancy misses Barbara, more-so than usual. 

It doesn’t really take much to make her think about her most of the time. Sometimes, she’ll see a dress while shopping and think that Barbara would love it, or she’ll hear a specific band's song and think that Barbara would really enjoy their new stuff. Really, Nancy can’t avoid missing her, even if she tries. 

It happens while she’s shuffling through her cramped closet in search of what to wear for her outing with Robin. A familiarly sad thought crosses her mind, sorrowful and saddening, that she would’ve loved to help her pick an outfit. 

She’s gotten used to the sinking feeling in her chest, the guilt that burns in the back of her mind, the general sorrow that accompanies thoughts of Barbara. Nancy wishes things were different.

Nancy winces at how it never stops hurting less.

In the end, she ends up wearing a knitwear sweater and a skirt. It’s not exactly fancy, and it isn’t casual either, and honestly Nancy is too late to care by then. She turns her car on with haste, fingers nervously combing through frizzy locks of hair, before peeling off into the street. It doesn't take long to get to Starcourt mall, and when she arrives, Robin is sitting on the curb with a cigarette between her lips and a big smile that makes Nancy remember why she likes her for the millionth time.

Robin stands up, absentmindedly disposing of the last of her cigarette, and as she does Nancy allows herself a quick scan of her. She’s wearing shorts, for once, and the beaming sun makes her freckles look like they’re glowing. Robin opens the passenger door and slides in with ease, turns to her with a teasing look on her face.

“What?”

“You’re late, dingus!”

“I—” Nancy lifts a finger up, but finds that there isn’t any way for her to defend herself, not when she thinks about the pile of clothes sitting on her bed in a pile that reeks of indecisiveness. She stares at Robin, unamused. 

“You’re excused, just this once.” Robin bats her eyes and waves her off, like she’s doing Nancy a favor, when really she’s the one that’s picking her up anyways. 

“God, I hate you,” She says, and they pull out of the parking lot, Robin’s laugh carried away by the summer breeze. 

Barbara would’ve wanted this. Would've wanted her to find happiness again. Nancy smiles at the thought.

  
  
  
  
  


__________

  
  
  
  
  
  


Time flies in the blink of an eye. Nancy’d forgotten how easy it is to become so entranced with someone to the point of forgetting time is even passing. She hasn’t felt like this in… long. _Very_ long. The recognition makes her feel giddy. She knows this isn’t anything special, that they’re _just_ friends, yet she doesn’t care anymore. Nancy’s happy so long as she gets to see Robin’s stupid pretty face.

By the end of the day, they wind up at the quarry, laying on the hood of Nancy’s car while sharing a blunt. 

Nancy’s never smoked weed before, but she can’t find any reason for refusing, especially when it’s Robin who’s offering now. Robin is safe. Everything _about_ her encompasses safety— she knows she’ll be fine, because it’s Robin. It can only ever be Robin.

It’s quiet tonight in a way that it rarely ever is in Hawkins. Ordinarily, there’d be a group of snobby, popular kids lined up by the quarry’s edge, the stench of cheap vodka surrounding their cars. Tonight, it’s empty, though. All that surrounds them is a quiet, barely audible chirping in the distance, and the repetitive lull of waves from below.

The stars are bright tonight, so brilliantly vivid that she can see them in the reflection of the water, so luminous that she can find them in Robin’s eyes with ease. Nancy’s never been so mellow. It might be the weed, it might be the person next to her, she can’t tell anymore.

“So.” Robin turns to look at her, blonde hair splayed across the hood.

Nancy blinks slowly, a languid feeling washing over her. She smiles at Robin, at her hair, at her eyes, at her entire being. Everything about her makes Nancy overflow with tenderness. “So?” 

“You’re seriously not going to do anything about the investigation?” Her features are pinched with worry, and it’s cute, how much she cares. Nancy doesn’t answer at first, listening as the waves crash against jagged rock.

_Ugh,_ the investigation. She’d almost forgotten about that.

The stupid rats led Jonathon and Nancy into a dead-end. She grimaces at the reminder that she has to work tomorrow. Another day of Nancy pouring coffee into mugs and crying by the dumpsters during her breaks. Another day that'll be rampant with misogyny. How wonderful.

“Can we talk about this another time...? Just thinking about it is giving me a headache,” Nancy utters.

“Sure, Nancy,” Robin gently hums, closing her eyes. 

At first, Nancy can’t think of anything to say, simply watching the shadows of her face move in a gentle matter. She looks like a painting, like something to be preserved and put on display so that others can stare in awe of its beauty. Nancy moves her jaw, tries to get something out.

“...Well, what’s been going on with you?” She manages to say. God, that took too long to get out. 

Robin opens one eye, then the other, looking up at her. Nancy looks right back, getting progressively redder, and watches as she slowly lifts the last bit of their joint to her lips in a lazy inhale. They gaze at one another, unwilling to break the air that has started to build between them, thick with something unidentifiable.

“Well,” She pauses, letting the smoke leave her mouth in a slow-moving cloud. Nancy glances at her mouth, momentarily, “So, Dustin, right? He’s utterly convinced that he caught this secret Russian transmission that could change history. And now I’m helping them, Steve included, because of _course_ he believes this shit.”

Nancy huffs out a quiet laugh, trying to pull herself together. “They’re both tolerable when seperate, but together? That’s something else _entirely._ ” Robin nods along in agreement.

“I know! It’s horrible,” She smiles.

Nancy’s eyes travel across the expanse of her face. Birds chirp in the far distance, just barely noticeable amidst the sound of gentle waves, and Nancy loves this. She loves absolutely everything about this, yearning to engross herself in the vulnerability that they seem to share with each other.

This doesn’t feel like Hawkins, Indiana. This is that same sanctuary, the one that they had during Halloween, the one that Nancy was afraid of having again. Hawkins isn’t a place in this sanctuary, and neither are doubts, and Nancy isn’t afraid. It’s okay. They’re okay.

Nancy’s eyes narrow at the realization that there’s a faint splotch of pink on Robin’s chin. 

“Your lip gloss is sorta smudged.” Nancy blurts. She watches as Robin raises her brows, sitting up.

“Must’ve been those slushies we had…” Her fingers graze along her cheek, then her jaw, in an attempt to find the streak. She passes right over it, and Nancy snorts.

Robin rolls her eyes, amused. “I didn’t get it, did I?” 

“Nope. Not at all.” She follows suit and sits up as well, sneakers dangling off the metal ledge of the car. 

“Can you—”

Robin starts to ask, but Nancy’s already brushing her thumb against the sticky pink splotch, swiping it away in gentle motions. Their legs entangle as she leans over slightly, legs draping over thighs, the toes of their shoes bumping into each other.

Nancy doesn’t know why she reaches for Robin without thinking so often, yet she does, because it's second nature. Because their hands seem to fit together so nicely whenever they intertwine. Because she's falling, and it's not off the tightrope, it's into love.

With a few strokes, it’s gone, and all that Nancy is left with is Robin staring down at her, mouth parted, pale blue eyes peering down at her. She blinks, realizes how close she is, doesn’t move. Her hand stays where it is, touching soft skin. Slowly, so gently that Nancy barely feels it, Robin leans into her touch. Nancy’s eyes go wide.

She glances down at her lips, then back up at Robin, who’s impossibly still, as if she doesn’t want to ruin the moment.

An arm moves to her shoulder, her waist, Robin searching for some sense of stability as she leans down unhurriedly. Nancy’s breath is stuttering, and it feels like her heart is literally going to give out, but that might just be the weed— she doesn’t know anymore. What she _does_ know is that Robin smells really good, like flowers and cigarettes, like an angel in disguise, like a sanctuary that Nancy just seems bound to.

Her hands shakily go to cup her face, strands of hair tangling into quivering fingers. Robin sucks in a sharp breath, nearly chokes on it, and leans down in a quick motion. Nancy closes her eyes, heart pounding—

Yet, before the distance is closed, the sound of a car revving up interrupts them.

Nancy nearly jumps out of her skin, entire body jolting, and it feels like electricity is coursing through every single blood vessel in her entire body. She feels overly sensitive, every inch of her screaming for the warmth that being held onto by Robin brought her back. It’s all too much.

Robin glances at her, red from the tip of her ears all the way to her neck; Nancy’s sure she looks just as rosy in the face as her. The two of them avert their collectively flustered stares toward the lone car parked behind them, headlights lighting the humid mist aglow. As the window opens, the mist scatters, as though it's running from something (or someone), and in the midst of blinding fluorescents, Nancy realizes who it is behind the windshield with a quiet glare.

Billy Hargrove’s button-down is open all the way to the navel, barely even on. The sheen of his muscles are slick with summer dew, like he’s some sort of fucking playboy that’s marketing himself to the women in Hawkins, which— he is, isn’t he? Billy makes it obvious. Maybe that’s why so many of them flock to him.

She gulps down the bile that sits in her throat at the realization that he must’ve seen what they were… _about_ to do. 

Fuck. Surely he wouldn’t blab, right?

What is she even thinking, of _course_ he would. Guys like him love getting their hands on the type of shit that can ruin someone’s life. 

Nancy’s thinking so hard that she doesn’t even notice when Robin gets up, feet planted firmly, and walks right over to him without any hesitance. She blinks, rubs her eyes, glances back at the spot that Robin had just been sitting at, like she might be seeing things. 

What the fuck? Nancy can’t help but question their relationship as she watches Robin lean down into the window and slap her hand against his shoulder with the might of somebody overflowing with annoyance. They weren’t friends, were they? She’d only seen them smoke on the staircase that _one_ time, and even then, Billy looked weirdly stiff and skittish all at once. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him like that.

Billy laughs, the sound loud and tight-sounding, and Nancy’s shoulders stiffen. Her confusion only seems to multiply as Billy smiles, _genuinely_ smiles, not the sort of smile that he wears in school or at parties— and looks at Robin with that same smile. Something ugly forms in Nancy’s chest, rigid with insecurity and fear, looming over her.

He whistles, the sound snapping Nancy to his attention. When she meets his eyes, he winks at her, grinning. She frowns, crossing her arms over herself protectively. Just as quick as he’s there, shielded in an incomprehensible mist, he’s gone, the car turning the corner off the quarry.

Robin shuffles back to the car, lip curled into a sneer, an expression Nancy barely ever sees on her face. 

The fear is overwhelming. She’s been called a lot of things. Priss, bitch, slut. But not faggot, or queer, or anything of that sort. A part of her thinks its only another set of insults to add to the collection, and the other part of her is mortified because she’s still technically dating Jonathon and oh _God_ she’s still dating Jonathon _._ “What was that?” She asks quietly.

Robin can clearly hear the panic in her voice, sees it in the way her nose is pinched, squeezes her hand. “Hey, hey. It’s fine. He won’t… you know.” She nods firmly, eyes glazed over at the mere mention of what’d almost happened. Nancy flushes. 

“Are you sure?” She clutches onto her shoulder for support, for some semblance of calm. 

Robin nods, again, and her stare is so sure and so trustworthy of Billy that she realizes she _has_ to be okay with him seeing them whether she wants to or not. 

Yet, the insecurity still lurks in her chest, rattling deep inside. 

“What are you guys?”

Robin stares at her incredulously for a small moment, brows pulled together. Her eyes are pale blue, twinkling like shooting stars, and Nancy thinks she might cup her face in her hands again.

  
  
“What do you mean? We’re friends.” Robin glances down, at her lips. That’s all it takes for her head to begin to move on its own again.

Nancy feels her throat go dry. Her grip on Robin’s shoulders _tightens, tightens, tightens._

She… can’t. 

“I should get you home.” Nancy whispers. Hopes Robin doesn’t hear her.

Robin does, though. She does, and it breaks her heart into a million little pieces, because she can see how she pulls back and hunches in on herself. 

“Oh. Okay.” Robin’s voice falters, cracks halfway through.

Nancy wishes she wasn’t so scared of everything. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> robin cracks a secret russian code, loses a bit of herself along the way, and finds it again in the byers' home. she also finds love. real, awe-stricken love, beneath pale moonlight and in eyes that she'll never grow tired of looking at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii!!!
> 
> first of all: I APPRECIATE THE SUPPORT SO MUCH WTF!!!! seeing your comments and your kudos and your reads mean the world to me lol.
> 
> secondly: this isn't a very romance-centric chapter, unfortunately. i tagged this as a character study and i felt that i needed to touch upon that aspect more. but don't worry, there'll be sum good stuff in the finale :)
> 
> have fun reading!!

The sound of Robin’s thoughts keep her up at night.

She’s never felt like this. 

It’s as though every time Robin inches closer to what she wants, so easily attainable for a tiny, minuscule instant, it vanishes into nothingness. Nancy and Robin are in a never-ending dance with one another, one step forward, two steps back. Robin is so indescribably upset at herself for screwing it all up.

  
  
She doesn’t eat that much lately — food tastes weirdly bland — and doesn’t find enjoyment in things as much as she used to. She knows why. She tries not to think about it. 

All that Robin has left are distractions to temporarily make her forget that Nancy has disappeared from her life as of late.

Pale, tired hands skim the coat rack in search of a jacket. Robin pauses as hands touch upon satiny nylon. She shrugs on her windbreaker, meant to hide their embarrassing uniform, and sits down to re-tie worn laces. There’s a rigid scowl etched on pink, despondent lips, hardening the shadows of Robin’s face.

“What?” Robin snarls. 

She doesn’t even need to look to know that Steve’s staring at her right now with his typical ‘I want to say something’ face: furrowed brows, pursed lips, and narrowed eyes.

“Uh… You- Wait- Just…” He flounders, tongueing at his cheek. “How do I word this without sounding like an asshole?” She sighs, long and hard. 

“Trying to say that I’ve been bitchy lately, Harrington?” Robin glances at him, pale blue eyes overcast in a murky haze. He nods, apprehensive. 

“I know. Believe me, I _do._ ” Robin’s words are cold and piercing, yet despite her tone, she can’t help feeling a pang of guilt. She feels the need to at least apologize for the foul attitude that he’s had to deal with for no apparent reason.

With a short inhale, Robin swallows her pride for the moment being and turns to face him. 

“Sorry—” He’s staring at her like she has three heads, and it’s really throwing her off, honestly, “—If I’ve been too uptight during my, uh, shifts.” It’s flat and a little robotic sounding, but Robin thinks it’ll have to do.

Steve opens his mouth, starts to say something, and stops himself. 

Instead, he simply grins at her. It’s his shitty attempt at a sympathy smile. She can tell.

The sight of it, of a grin like that, it doesn’t make her feel like shit, for once.

It doesn’t _feel_ like anything— other than a real, genuine attempt at comfort. Robin sniffles.

“See you tomorrow, Robin.” 

“Better be here on time, dingus.”

Steve laughs.

  
  


__________

Six days since the last time she’s seen Nancy. A week in two hours.

Robin thinks that she’s officially scared her off to the point of no return. She feels it in her gut, knows it must be true.

As difficult and grueling as their ceaseless dance is to navigate, Robin still wants to keep going. She wants to twirl, wants to sway, wants to stumble on her feet and lose balance in the process. Robin wants it all, wants the pain and the struggle— but wanting means nothing if Nancy won't be her dance partner.

Things feel dull, again, in the same way they do whenever Robin feels herself fading away— except it’s because of Nancy this time.

  
  
Perfect, but not perfect (and that’s okay), Nancy Wheeler. Bold Nancy. Pretty Nancy.

  
  
Her Nancy.

Robin misses her everyday.

  
  


__________

Billy has been stopping by more often after catching Nancy and Robin almost kissing.

Robin doesn’t know what it means or what he wants. What she _does_ know, however, is that his scathing stare is dangerous. Having Billy Hargrove lock target on her doesn’t exactly bode well. 

She spends days trying to figure out what he’s planning, and none of it makes any sense until she clocks out one day and Billy is at the entrance to Starcourt Mall in his stupid Camero.

Slowly, he lets the window down, and gestures for her to get inside with a jerk of his thumb. 

She pauses, but decides to oblige, because there’s still this residual notion deeper within her, the one that involves Billy and his lingering gaze on Steve’s back.

She catches glimpses of that same gaze sometimes, when he stops by Scoops Ahoy solely to rile Steve up. Occasionally, she’ll watch both of them and notice these small things that she can’t quite put her finger on. Robin doesn’t know when they became friends (which is questionable), or when things even shifted between them, but what she _does_ know is that he looks at Steve in the same way she looks at Nancy. It’s a strange curiosity that presses on her when she leasts expects it, pushing her towards Billy and his steely facade.

That very burning curiosity has her opening the door to his car and sitting down despite all the alarms in her head going off and saying she’s making a horrible mistake by doing this.

“How’d you figure out when my shift ends?” She asks. A yawn slips out, just barely noticeable, her hand covering her mouth. 

He watches her, indifferent. “Doesn’t matter.” 

Another yawn slips out, quieter this time. Robin slouches in her seat, longing for her bed.

Steve and Dustin have had her doing that stupid Russian code almost _constantly_ throughout the past week. She honestly doesn’t mind, since it takes her mind off things, but balancing work alongside cracking militant codes has her absolutely beat by the end of the day. They’ve gotten pretty far, regardless. The only thing Robin has left is to decipher what it means. Dustin’s been on her ass about it like a buffoon.

With a sharp inhale, she tries to wake up, and instead catches a whiff of leather and cologne and _smoke_ , the stench more pungent than anything else.

“God, man. And I thought _I_ stunk like cigarettes.” She plugs her nose, exhaling through parted lips. Billy swipes his tongue across his lip in vexation.

“Shut it.” Billy says, voice cold and venomous. 

The air in the car shifts simultaneously at that into something more heavy, more firm. Robin begrudgingly clamps her mouth shut. She has to remind herself that he _saw_ them. Obeying to his unpredictable whims were the best (and only) option that she had, really.

A plume of smoke travels from the exhaust of Billy’s car, tires skidding as he pulls out of the lot. Robin finds herself clinging onto the handlebars above her and wondering why the _fuck_ he couldn’t have at least given a warning, but— he’s the one in charge right now. Robin has to keep that in mind, or else she’ll slip up and get too cheeky with him and who knows how things would end up after that.

They drive and drive and drive, until eventually they’re at the very outermost part of Hawkins, Billy blasting hard rock like it’s nobody’s business. There’s nothing remarkable around except for an abandoned railroad, some middle-of-nowhere pubs, and… the quarry, on its lonesome.

Nope, nuh-uh. Robin doesn’t want to go there. She refuses.

“Hey, m—”

“What did I _say?_ ” Billy sets his heavy gaze on her through the rearview mirror. 

Robin thickly swallows, beginning to panic. She fumbles for some excuse for them to leave. “My bike. It’s still back at the mall.” 

“Okay, and?” He barks, voice barely audible over the vibration of the music. 

Robin feels like she’s going to suffocate, between the deafening radio and Billy’s oppressive glare, trying to find something, anything to make him let up. “Ju—” She goes silent as the quarry appears before her, looming dreadfully.

She clutches onto what’s closest, fingers quivering beneath the denim of her shorts. 

“You can’t just…” Oh, God. She’s drowning, again.

All that Robin can see is the phantom memory of Nancy’s car on the quarry’s edge, the two of them inches away from sealing one, just one, small kiss. How did things get to be so bad so quickly? If only Robin hadn’t been so stupid. She should’ve said something, hugged her, let her know that she still wanted this and would always want this and that she would’ve waited f—

“Robin.”

She flinches, turns to see Billy with an unreadable expression. His music is turned all the way down, enveloping the car in a tense silence.

“You’re not the only one in this shithole of a town.” 

Robin’s jaw unhinges, and she tries to reign herself in, but she just can’t— _the only one._ He didn’t even need to say anything more, didn’t need to add a ‘queer’ or a ‘gay’ or a resentful ‘faggot’. None of that is the same as saying that she’s not the only _one._

Her fear of being truly alone shatters, diminishing into thin air.

“Holy shit! You- Wh- This is, like, simultaneously the least and most surprising thing I’ve ever heard!” Robin blurts, feeling herself begin to relax bit by bit. Her grip loosens and her shoulders slump. Billy Hargove, of all people. Wow.

Billy’s mouth twitches, as though he can’t decide whether to laugh or scowl. He tears his gaze away and onto the quarry. “Fuck off, Robin.”

“Hey!” Robin jabs at him, laughing all the while, slightly hysterical. Holy shit, she’s not the only queer. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. And— she’s right, too, isn’t she? About Billy. Of course she is. “I had a feeling ever since that time on the steps.” 

He turns to her immediately, scoffing, “Bull _shit._ No, you didn’t.”

“Did too.” Robin scoffs right back at him.

“Did not.”

  
  
“Did too!” Robin arches a brow at him as though daring him to continue.

Billy grits his teeth. “You are _really_ something, you know that?” He drums his fingers along the steering wheel, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and fumbles for his lighter all in the same breath. She watches as the flame flickers to life and he brings it to his lips like it’s second nature. 

“So, _that’s_ why you come to Scoops Ahoy so much,” Robin watches as he chokes and sputters on the smoke in his lungs. Yep, she hit the nail on the head.

“You-” Billy coughs, “Have to fucking _stop_ saying the most out-of-nowhere shit while I’m mid-puff.”

“Sorry, sorry!” She pities him, she really does, but the grin on her face says otherwise.

  
  
He grunts something that Robin can’t make out and takes another drag, long and strenuous. Robin shifts her weight from one knee to the other, crossing legs.

“I’m not wrong though, am I? I swear, I’ve seen you more this month alone then I have in the last eight at school,” She hums thoughtfully, reminiscing. The first time he visited was sort of funny, in a way.

He’d walked in, realized who she was, and immediately cackled with amusement.

Steve had sort of just stood there, hands on his hips, looking beyond lost. Robin rolled her eyes so hard she swore they got stuck in place for a few seconds. After a few visits, he actually knew Robin’s name without needing to look at her name tag or anything, which was surprising to say the least. (Probably because she occasionally butted into their conversations with her own varying remarks at Steve’s expense. They sort of tag-teamed sometimes, in a way.)

“Don’t act like you’re the only one noticing shit. Wheeler comes just as much as I do.” She goes stiff at the mention of Nancy. Billy notices, leans back, and laughs.

“What? You two having relationship problems or something? Uh-oh,” Billy teases, one of those weirdly formed grins on his face. The ones that look tight and somehow wrong on him.

“We’re not- I’ve never dated her,” Robin shakes her head, bites her lip.

“Seriously?” He looks unconvinced, still grinning.

“...Yeah.” She tries for dismissive and ends up sounding utterly pitiful instead.

Maybe it’s the way he seems to reflect her sorrow in a similar manner, although more sardonic and cutting, but Robin feels strangely safe with him despite his flaws. It’s why she lets herself fall apart for just the smallest moment, caving in on herself, and then immediately wipes the sorrow off her face in an attempt to mask the despondence. 

She can see herself in him. They’re two sides of the same coin, in more ways than one. He sees it too, Robin can tell.

Billy lifts the cigarette from his lips, stares at her in an indistinct haze. It's indescribably quiet. Robin knows he probably doesn’t want to have to deal with the emotional baggage she’s carrying, that all he wanted was to let her know she won’t have to worry about getting outed, yet— Robin has no one to talk to about things. No one to lean on. Nancy was who she used to lean on. And even then, she couldn’t talk _about_ Nancy _to_ Nancy. He’s the only viable option left in this stupid, tiny town.

“You remember the day that Steve came to school with all those bruises?” He taps the ash off the end of his cigarette, not really looking at Robin, stare directed at the side of her face.

“Of course I do,” Robin says.

He huffs. “Well, those rumours weren’t phoney.” 

She stares at him, shocked. The gears in her head begin to turn.

He takes her silence as an invitation to continue. “It was a mess of a thing. I liked him then. Still do now. Things were never the same after.” Billy talks slowly— like he’s thinking out loud— then shifts to face her head-on. 

The sunlight paints his face in a light that she’s never seen it before, unguarded and earnest if not for a _tiny_ second, and in that second, Robin realizes that he’s just as relieved to not be alone anymore as she is. He looks tired, too, beneath the relief. Utterly tired of pretending.

She stares for a moment, tries to get something out, but can only smile sadly at him. 

“Get what I’m trying to say, shitbird?” Billy snaps right back into himself, wry and goading. 

Robin nods, just once.

In his own detached, roundabout way, he warns her that Nancy and Robin could’ve easily gone down the same path Steve and Billy did, full of turmoil and an unbridled strain between the two of them. 

“Good.” Billy turns the music up again.

  
  
  


__________

  
  
  


  
It takes two days, and a lot of peace and quiet that Robin can’t ever seem to actually have, but eventually— she cracks the code.

Their victory is celebrated with a few leftover scoops of Erica’s sundae, after she agrees to help them out at the expense of free ice-cream for lifetime. Dustin, Steve, and Robin sit in the empty Scoops Ahoy, swatting each other’s spoons out of the way to get a scoop of gooey, chocolatey goodness. Only the store signs are on, the mall closed, casting them in a warm neon glow. The store is a mess, plastic spoons and napkins scattered all over the place.

“I _really_ think there could’ve been a better way to get her on our side,” Steve says through a mouthful of melting ice-cream.

Robin makes a face of disgust, flicks a few sprinkles stuck to her hand at him. He tries to dodge her attack and manages to get one in his eye. “What other option did we have, genius?”

Dustin nods, mouth puckered. “She has a point.”

“We could’ve…” He pauses, trying to think. Dustin watches him, eyes sparkling in admiration. There’s chocolate all over his chin, and Robin can’t help wondering how he even let that happen. “Oh, whatever! All I’m saying is that she’s going to abuse the absolute shit out of her lifetime guarantee.”

Dustin shrugs, like it’s not his problem (because it isn’t), and goes back to lifting a spoon-full of dessert into his mouth. Robin huffs. “Since when do you care, Steve? I’m always the one dealing with her anyways.”

“You guys better hope she doesn’t bleed Scoops Ahoy dry,” Dustin interjects, pointing a finger at Erica across the room, who's been spending the past five minutes staring at the ice-cream display and fantasizing about the endless possibilities of infinite sundaes.

As though she can sense their eyes on her, Erica whips her head around. “I have _ears,_ Dustin!”

Dustin freezes, looking like a deer caught in headlights. Steve, in turn, gives him a pat on the shoulder that sort of says ‘only God can help you now’. Robin snorts. “How did you hear me?!”

“You are really, really, _really_ stupid for a nerd.” She completely ignores what he says, opting to skip straight to insulting him instead.

Steve glances between Dustin and Erica, watching as they delve into a pointless argument about _something_ — Robin can’t even tell what it is they’re so heated about — and slouches in his seat. Robin mirrors him, doing the same. They stare at one another and begin to snicker, initiating a game of footsie underneath the table.

Robin can’t help wondering when her life led to this.

She doesn’t really mind how things are all that much, despite her internal bewilderment.

  
  


__________

  
  
People have told Robin that she tended to be overly ambitious many times before.

She didn’t believe them until now.

Really, it’s astonishing. From deciphering a secret Russian code all the way to hidden Russian bases, interrogations, being drugged, and one of the scariest moments of her life— in which Robin stared at Steve’s lifeless body and prayed he wasn’t dead with everything in her.

Things just kept escalating and— finally, _finally,_ she finds some solace on the floor of a dirty bathroom. It's an odd thing, it really is.

“Honestly, you’re out of Tammy’s league.”

Robin averts her gaze from the ceiling towards Steve’s bruised face, frowning.

There’s a deep sense of guilt that sits in her throat, constricting with its unyielding hold on her, at the fact that she lied about Tammy. It’s Nancy, it’s always _been_ Nancy, there will never be anyone but Nancy. Robin knows that, she does, but telling Steve that she really likes Nancy fucking Wheeler of all the people in Hawkins, Indiana does _not_ feel like it would bode well.

But, more than that, more than anything else, Robin is just so relieved that he’s alive. She’s so relieved that it’s overwhelming, truly.

“Steve.” She quietly murmurs. He hums in acknowledgement, staring at her.

“I.. I thought you were dead. Back there.” Robin says, throat burning, “Th- You-” Robin hides her face in her hands, feeling the tears coming. “It was so scary, Steve.”

The droplets that cascade down her cheeks and onto the floor are more than Steve, more than the Russians, more than all of it. Robin can’t hold it in anymore like she did with Billy. The mere thought that she had almost lost Steve is enough to break the dam.

“Hey, hey. Robin, look at me.” She feels gentle hands on her wrists, coaxing. Slowly, she lets him through, and the sight of him makes her choke back an ashamed cry. The skin on his face is swollen and inflamed and she knows it hurts.

Steve gazes at her, rubbing circles into her palm, mouth downturned. “I’m here. I’m okay.” He knows what she’s thinking just at a glance. Of course he does. “Yeah, the bruises hurt like hell, but it’s not my first time. I’ll be fine.”

She grabs onto his wrists, then his palm. Their hands intertwine. The two of them breathe, let the panic and the trauma and the worry subside. Robin finds herself beginning to feel okay. It takes a long while for her to wipe her tears and gingerly smile again.

“You mean when Billy beat you up, right?” She asks, after everything settles.

“Huh?” He almost withdrawals at the mention of Billy, leaning away slightly. His face shifts and changes into something entirely different. He seems annoyed and enthralled at the mention of his name all at once, like he can't decide what he should be feeling.

“You said it’s not your first time getting roughed up.” Robin tilts her head.

“So you believe the rumors.” Steve rolls his eyes, gently letting go of her to run a hand through his hair.

“Uh…” Robin rubs the back of her neck. “Billy sort of told me. I guess.”

Steve's mouth unhinges, eyes as wide as saucers. “Wh- Are you joking or something?! Why in the hell would _he_ tell _you?_ ” Robin glares at him. “No offense.” He tacks on sheepishly.

“It’s a long story. Very long. _Too_ long.” Robin dismisses his burning questions away with a wave of the hand. He smacks at her shoulder, annoyed.

“Rob—”

“So does that mean that the _other_ rumor about Jonathon beating your ass is true?” She smirks just the tiniest bit.

Steve makes an offended noise, somewhere between a guffaw and a wheeze. “Okay, _first_ of all, you don’t even have the context! Secondly, fuck you.”

Robin busts out laughing at that, practically falling over. The bruises on her sides and along her stomach hurt but she doesn’t care.

“Wow,” She gasps for air, “Real clever one, Steve!”

Steve tries to fight the smile that begins to form on his face, fails, and ends up laughing along with her idiotically.

Dustin and Erica bust in right as Steve hits his head on the toilet paper dispenser and they start full-on wheezing. Despite the inevitable terrors that await them— Robin is grateful for the temporary safe place.

  
  
  


__________  
  
  
  
  
  


  
Things happen fast after they leave the restroom. Too fast.

One moment, they’re trying to blend in with the crowd leaving the mall, and the next, they’re running from Russians in the food court. It’s almost astounding, how nothing seems to ever go right for them.

Robin isn’t a runner, by any means, but as of now? She’s hitting speeds never reached before as she sprints and slides beneath a counter, ushering everyone under. The threat of being caught elevates every bodily instinct within her and she can truly feel it in the way her entire body vibrates beneath her skin. Every muffled transmission, every small whisper, every scuff of the shoes, she can hear it all.

Her heart is absolutely pounding— she can feel it from her eardrums right down to the ends of her feet— and from the looks of it, everyone else can too. She holds her breath, closes her eyes, pleads to whatever higher power that they make it out of this alive. Erica clings onto her backpack, quivering slightly, and Robin’s heart shatters.

She’s too young to be traumatized by this, to be fearing for her life.

The shine of a flashlight reflects against metal, beaming straight into their vision, and Robin lifts a hand to block it from blinding her. Dustin does the same, and Steve follows after, the three of them glancing at each other with grim expressions.

Steps reverberate along the empty food court, each one moving closer and closer, the sound leaving death in its wake.

This is it, Robin thinks.

They got pretty lucky, honestly. She’s happy they managed to actually escape let alone make it this far.

She grabs onto those closest to her, ducking their heads down in a final attempt to hide.

In the blink of an eye, a deafening crash disrupts what Robin assumes is her final breath, the sound ear-splitting and way too close for comfort. A large silhouette overshadows their hiding place, and when the four of them look up, they find that there’s a car looming over them rather than Russians.

Robin stands up, legs shaking; she grips onto the counter for support. Her breaths are fast and shallow, panicked with the death that they just narrowly avoided. One second longer and they would’ve been done for.

Dustin is the first to see everyone standing on the second floor and tugs at Steve's shirt, pointing to them. Robin, Steve, and Erica follow his finger until their eyes fall upon a group of seven.

Robin squints, legs almost giving out when she scans each face and sees Max, Lucas, Mike, Nancy, and Will among the group. Why were there so many _children_ involved in this?

Wait— Nancy?

Did she see that right?

Robin blinks once, twice, focuses her stare solely on the figure with short, brown hair and a red-striped shirt.

Oh. Oh, that’s definitely her.

Even from here, Robin can see the sharp defined cut of her jaw and her deep-set eyes. Her mind momentarily races with questions of why and where and what. Nancy seems to realize it’s her as well, leaning over the railing with wide eyes. She glances over at Steve, who looks the least bit surprised, and the sight only manages to double her confusion.

Erica stumbles out from behind the counter, looking about as dazed as Robin feels, and the rest of them follow in her steps towards the other group.

They meet somewhere in the middle, and as soon as everyone nears, it’s a mess of hugs and tackles and arguments. Robin thinks this is what a family looks like.

Steve is almost immediately hugged by every child with the exception of Lucas, who’s delved into an argument with Erica about her being here. Robin scans the group and finds two unfamiliar faces— one is a girl with bright clothes and curious eyes, and the other is a guy that looks her age, with short brown hair and a reserved look about him. She glances at them, vaguely interested, but finds that she can’t focus on anything but Lucas and Max who have swarmed her with questions.

Before Robin can even realize, too caught up in the frenzy of everything, Nancy's weaving through the commotion towards her. In an instant, Robin is swallowed up in a rib-crushing hug. Immediately, she wraps her arms around her waist like it’s second nature and squeezes as tightly as possible, their bodies melding into one.

"Hey.” Robin whispers, nose tickled at the sensation of Nancy’s familiar curls.

“Hey, yourself.” Nancy chokes out, inhaling sharply.

Robin laughs, wincing when Nancy tightens her grip and a bruise is grazed in the process. She retracts immediately, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Robin finds herself gazing into Nancy’s big, blue, concerned eyes once more. It feels like the world shifts on its axis and realigns in an instant, things returning to how they should be. The weight lifts off Robin’s shoulders. Her arms move to her shoulders, Robin giving a small squeeze.

“I’m okay.” She reaffirms her, wanting so badly to stroke her fingers against her cheek. Nancy looks incredibly unconvinced. “It’s nothing compared to Steve, trust me.”

Nancy stiffens, like she’s just realized where they are, and when the two of them glance around, they find Steve staring. Her face drops.

“Wow, you’re right...” Nancy mutters, hand over her mouth. Robin bites back a laugh.

“Uh, am I missing something here?” Steve sounds puzzled, but she can hear something else beneath the confusion. Something deliberate.

Steve has this expression on his face where he’s realized something, Robin can tell. She squints at him and watches as he purposely ignores her glare.

Nancy glances between them and slowly pulls back, leaving Robin’s embrace. Robin tries not to look incredibly upset, straightens, and brushes herself off.

“Not now, Steve.” Robin rolls her eyes at the way that he stares at her expectantly. Nancy glances between them with bewilderment.

“Well, are _either_ of you going to explain what the hell just happened with that car?”  
  
  


  
  
__________  
  
  
  


  
  
The first thing that Robin thinks as she watches Starcourt Mall burn to the ground is that her life will never be the same.

Everytime she catches the tiniest glimpse of a reflection in the light of a neon sign, all that she sees is that monster made of flesh, the image of it warped in illumination. She wonders if she’ll always see it wherever she looks, if it’ll haunt her in her dreams and in the shadows of Hawkins, no matter how long passes.

Mostly, though, all she can really think about are the kids.

Two years. These kids have been dealing with ‘Demagorgans’ and the ‘Upside-Down’ and ‘Mind Flayers’ for _two_ whole years. And yet, after only being a part of everything for only a few weeks or so, Robin already feels as though something dark and paranoid within her has taken shape and planted itself in the back of her mind.

These children are so much stronger than she’d thought they were.

It's too much to comprehend, honestly, and it takes everything in Robin to not fall apart. Rather than closing her eyes and never opening them again, as her mind so desperately wants her to, she finds herself with an arm around Steve while he stands over Billy’s body instead.

The white gauze that’s wrapped around Billy slowly grows red with each passing minute that Steve stares at him with a lifeless look in his eyes, unmoving. The first responder had told them it barely missed his heart, that it was a miracle he was still here.

Her eyes travel across the expanse of the mall, lit aflame. The smell of burning, acrid, flesh intermingle further off. Max and Eleven cling onto one another and weep, tears running down their faces in thick droplets. Then there’s Will and his mother, Joyce, who silently cries as she holds onto her son and bites her lip.

Robin tears her gaze away from the sadness before her and onto a different one— Steve’s sadness is more raw and uncontained, she can feel it in the way that it radiates off him in ripples.

She can’t even begin to comprehend how he feels or _what_ he feels, really, for Billy. All she can possibly comprehend now is his despondent stance, slightly shaking as though on the verge of what might just be collapsing, and his pale skin. 

When Steve first heard that Billy was the one the Mind Flayer chose as its host, he completely shut down in a manner that Robin had never witnessed. He hadn’t averted his stare from Billy the whole time, not once, even when the firefighters carried him out of the flames. Max, on the other hand, couldn’t bear to look at him. It had been too much for her to see him like that.

“Steve…” Robin squeezes his arm, wants him to look away.

“I know.” He breathes.

It takes a long moment, in which he takes a final look at how decrepit Billy is, and averts his gaze towards the floor. Then towards her.

Robin feels an overwhelming sense of sorrow overcome her. His stare is so empty, so hurt.

“Robin?”

“Yeah, Steve?”

“Don’t give up on her.”

She freezes, knows who he’s talking about immediately.

“Nancy looks… different, around you.” Steve exhales. “She never looked like that around me. Or around Jonathon.”

“I…” Robin doesn’t know what to say. She frowns.

All that she can think of is Steve and how he must be in pain. How he might not even have the chance to follow his own advice if Billy doesn’t pull through. Her frown deepens. Steve must look at her and think that she has something he may never get. The thought is shattering.

“I’m sorry.”  
  


  
  
  
__________  
  
  


  
  
  
It takes a while, but eventually, things settle. They end up at the Byers’ home, people in every corner of the household, taking up space wherever they can.

It’s around five in the morning, and the sun is meant to rise in an hour, but everyone is so shaken up that they don’t even notice.

Steve sits on the couch, holding his head in his hands and bouncing his knee. Max is next to him with an energy that’s exactly the same in Robin’s eyes, maybe because they’re both worrying over the same person, she can’t tell. Eleven has her head on Max’s shoulder, clinging on gently, their pinkies intertwined. It’s nice to see amidst all the adrenaline still in the air. Dustin, Lucas, and Erica are sitting on the floor of the room, the two siblings still bickering over who knows what in that familial sort of way that means ‘I love you and I’m glad you’re okay’. Dustin has been simply staring at Steve with concern.

Robin’s been sitting alone at the kitchen table for the past ten minutes just… processing.

It’s a lot to take in, _all_ of it is— everything happened so fast and the fact that Robin was actually drugged and interrogated by Russians is an entirely different matter in it of itself because what the fuck— but then the huge flesh monster exists, too, and by the time she wraps her head around _that_ , she has a headache.

Feeling dizzy, Robin slowly clambers out of the dining room and into the kitchen. The back of her head is really starting to throb as she walks, and _ouch,_ it’s somehow more painful than any of the bruises along her torso. When she turns the corner, she comes face to face with Joyce Byers, the frail-looking woman grabbing at a bottle of Phrenilin. She wears an expression of worry that Robin thinks might be the typical for her.

Just as the top of the bottle pops open, Robin clears her throat, and Joyce jumps at the sound.

“Gosh, when did you get here? You have quiet steps!” Joyce says, hand over her heart. Robin offers a weary chuckle, every part of her thrumming in pain. Discomfort sits in her ribs and swelters.

“I had a headache, so I came to look for…” Robin trails off, vaguely gesturing.

“Oh! This ol’ thing, huh?” She rattles the bottle, a soft smile on her face, before setting it down on the counter. “Guess we both had the same problem.”

“I guess we did.” Robin smiles sadly at her.

She’d heard a little bit about it from Steve on the way back. He told her about how Will went missing and had his body taken over (like Billy) and about Joyce’s never-ending journey in keeping him safe. Robin can’t imagine how scary it must be, having a son that’s gone through those things and might go through them again, not being able to do anything about it but prepare for what seems to be the inevitable.

“What’s your name again, sweetie? I’m sorry, it’s just been a long day. You get it, I hope,” Joyce murmurs softly, sliding the container over to her.

She _absolutely_ gets it. “It’s fine. I’m Robin. I worked with Steve.” Robin peers into the translucent orange bottle, takes two pills out.

“So _that’s_ how you got dragged into this,” Joyce hums thoughtfully, “Let me get you some water.” Joyce is already reaching up into the cabinets and grabbing a cup by the time Robin even considers politely objecting, turning the sink on. Within a minute, it’s in her hands.

“Thank you, Ms. Byers.” She stiffly says. With a few gulps, the pills are down, and Robin’s wiping at her mouth.

“Joyce is fine, sweetie.” Joyce tentatively gives her one last smile and turns to go, but stops in her tracks after a second or so, turning back. “Robin?”

“Yeah?” Robin shifts the weight between her feet, feeling oddly nervous beneath Joyce’s observative stare.

“You’re a part of this family, now. I hope you know that.”

Her words are simple and solemn, yet as she says them, Robin feels herself beginning to choke up. She nods. Joyce takes it as it is, leaves the kitchen, and after a long while of consideration and mulling through her existence, Robin decides to get some fresh air. She needs it. The kitchen is only further stifling her meek attempts at trying to remain dry-eyed.

She passes the living-room on her way to the porch. As she does, Steve spares a glance and a tiny smile— it’s a soft thing, like seeing her makes things less hard. Her heart clenches. Dustin waves at her, and Max does the same. Eleven is asleep on Max’s lap. Lucas and Erica nod their heads at her, a sort of subtle acknowledgement.

For the first time in her life, she feels at home.

There’s a budding warmth that sits in her chest and begins to uncoil, the fondness and tender nature of it hopeful amongst everything else.

Robin opens the door to the porch, and as she does, Nancy’s standing there. The warmth spreads from her chest to her face.

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

Nancy doesn’t even need to turn her head, knows who it is already. “Oh, shut up.”

Robin cracks a smile, closing the door behind her. The floorboards creak beneath her as she walks, moving to lean on the railing next to Nancy. Their shoulders brush momentarily. She doesn’t know who decides to lean against who first (they both do, she thinks), but Robin can feel the weight of Nancy against her side.

It’s strange, how they always come back to each other, even when they don’t mean to.

“Where’d you get those, anyways?” Robin nudges at the pack on the railing, brow raised.

“Stole them from Joyce.” She speaks around the cigarette.

Laughter bubbles up in Robin, light and airy. The sensation is overwhelmingly pleasant compared to all the fear she’s gone through in the past few days. “Wow, bad girl Nancy. Didn’t think you had it in you to steal from anyone.”

Nancy turns, glaring at her in a half-assed attempt at staying serious. Robin stares back, biting her lip to keep from laughing again. Nancy breaks first, snorting. “You are a pain in the _ass,_ Robin.” It sounds rude, but she’s grinning, and Robin finds it more endearing rather than anything else.

“I know.” Robin feels her cheeks dimple as she smiles, doesn’t even try to hide her blatant happiness at them talking again.

Things have been so horrible, not just because of the Upside-Down and the Russians, but because Nancy has been nowhere. Nowhere and everywhere all at once, wherever Robin _isn’t._

Robin can’t do this, can’t keep living without an answer or an explanation.

Nancy is her beacon of happiness, sanity, and hope; she’s all the good things in life that Robin didn’t think she’d ever be allowed to have. If anything, Robin just wants to know why. Why she ran, why she hid. Nothing more. No kiss, no confession, none of that.

“Why did you leave like that?” She utters.

Nancy sighs, like she knew it was coming. Her shoulders go taut. She takes a drag, squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment, and finally says, “I was scared.”

Scared?

Robin thinks that Nancy is the bravest person she knows— she shot a gun at Billy Hargrove while he drove right at her earlier, for Christ’s sake— but she doesn’t interject with her preconceived notions and remains attentive, letting her figure out a way to properly explain it.

Nancy grips onto the railing until her knuckles are white, runs a hand through her curls, knowing that she can’t avoid talking about this like she has before, with other things. They sit in a tense silence as she mulls through her thoughts. It takes a while, and Robin’s okay with that.

“I’m _always_ scared. I don’t think there’s a single day where I wake up and I’m not scared of something or someone.” Nancy chokes on her words, breathes out shakily. “Sometimes I’ll swear that I see a demogorgon in the walls of my house, when I’m home alone, when really it’s just the blinds making these weird shapes all over. And then other times, at the internship, I’m scared of the men and their stupid opinions and their power over me. I’m scared of this city, of the shadows in the forest at night, of so _much_.” Nancy seems to gradually unhinge as she speaks, unraveling and falling apart at the seams.

Robin doesn’t reply until she’s sure. “I—”

“Don’t comfort me, or pity me. _Please,_ don’t. I don’t want it.” Nancy looks up at her, expression unashamedly honest. “I just... need you to know.”

She watches the last of her exterior crumble away, in a trance.

Robin loves her.

It’s only now, staring at her like this, weak and scared and still so strong in Robin’s eyes despite everything, that she realizes it.

Robin glances down, noticing her shaking hands, and leans over to hold onto her. “Okay, Nancy.”

“Thank you.”

The two of them watch the clouds and lean on each other for support. Because that’s what they do. That's who they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just HAD to sprinkle in some flayed-billy/steve stuff. the strain of that dynamic has always been so interesting to me. maybe one day ill do some billy/steve.... one day............. 
> 
> anyways, i hope you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nancy decides to see things through to the end with robin, once and for all. in the process, her fears become smaller and more minuscule with each passing day, and haunting memories are replaced with newer, better ones. ones with robin and the rest of their little dysfunctional family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello! this update took a hell of a while, but it's finally here at 10k+ words, filled to the brim with the robin/nancy that i think we all have been waiting for!!
> 
> please enjoy and disregard any gramatical/spelling errors as i haven't gone through this very carefully lol. <3

Nancy can’t really remember the last time she’s watched the sunrise.

Views like these, with orange at the horizon and lilac-stained edges wherever she looks, accompanied by the softest tinge of blue, are easily forgettable in the frenzy of Hawkins. The Byers’ backyard slopes downwards, giving way to a lush treeline where the beginnings of light peak through in streaks of vibrance. Her hands and her feet are painted golden with its beauty, bits and pieces of sun flecked across pale skin.

It’s beautiful, all of it. 

The last time she did this was probably when she was a sophomore, still starry-eyed and determined to do ‘cool’ shit like sneak onto rooftops with alcohol as the sun rose so that she’d set herself apart from everyone else. That way she’d have memorable experiences to look back on. It feels meaningless now, amidst the vast expanse of the world before her, filled with monsters and other things that she can’t even begin to understand.

All Nancy remembers are the bad parts of everything.

There’s a part of her that thinks it was a waste of time to even try and make those memories, because they’ve ended up being so forgettable, yet, as she stands and looks at the horizon, she somehow remembers the _good_ parts so clearly that it stuns her into silence. For the first time in a long, long while, she so vividly recalls those small moments, pockets of happiness. 

The bad parts feel minuscule for the tiniest second.

Nancy wants to make more of those memories, the good ones. 

The sound of a door rattling open behind her reverberates into open air. She doesn’t dare to look away from the sunrise, tries to etch the ache of appeasement deep within herself. She won’t forget anymore.

“Hey.” Jonathan’s voice travels to her softly. She lifts her head in surprise. A part of her longed for it to be Robin instead of him, back for the second time. She’d left Nancy to her thoughts after a lengthy conversation. They talked about what they’d gone through — what they’d seen and felt. Her chest tightens just thinking about the vulnerability of it, the goodness it emanated.

After a moment of finality, Nancy tears her gaze from the sky. 

He looks surprisingly okay, considering everything. “Hey.”

“Morning,” She greets him with a tiny yawn. “You get any sleep?”

“Not really. Too much happening in the house. It’d feel wrong to go to bed with everyone here.” He quietly explains, rubbing at the nape of his neck. 

“Yeah…” She sighs, shoulders slumped. 

Nancy can’t even really remember the last time she’s slept. Two— no, that sounds wrong— three days, maybe? It’s all a blur, honestly. She lost a night’s worth of sleep after they fought over Ms. Driscoll and an almost obsessive determination overtook her, mainly because there was just this gut feeling within her that something _more_ was going on, apart from the rats and the fertilizer. Then there was the hospital, where Nancy got attacked by that monster (which is definitely going to account for at least another two more days of no sleep), and then Starcourt Mall… so, yeah. 

Three nights. 

Nancy can barely even feel the sleep deprivation amidst all the emotional upheaval.

“Oh,” Jonathan hums, snapping her back to reality in an instant, “Mom was wondering where this was.” She follows his stare until her eyes land upon the pack of cigarettes. Dainty, nimble fingers reach over to grab onto it. Nancy reddens slightly with embarrassment.

“Ah… tell her I said sorry?” She says. Jonathon laughs, nestling it into his back pocket. 

  
“It’s fine.” He leans across the railing, hands resting beneath his chin, and inhales deeply. Nancy stares at the side of his face, watching as he collects his thoughts.

“Are you sure about this? About— about us?” Jonathan looks down, contemplation turning to uncertainty, and looks at her with an earnest gleam in his eyes. 

Nancy had broken up with him the moment she got home after almost kissing Robin. 

It hadn’t been hard. She’d _like_ to think that the whole thing was a spur of the moment decision, but really, it wasn't spontaneous by any means. Nancy’s known for a while why she needed to end things, why they weren’t good for each other. It was just a matter of when it happened. There was no doubt in her mind. No inkling of a second thought.

She nods. “I’m sure.”

They stare at each other, processing. A moment of recollection settles upon them, in which Nancy mulls through every argument, every kiss, every _good part._ She’d almost forgotten about those fragments up until now.

Despite the amalgamation of good and bad and okay, she doesn’t regret doing this, not one bit. 

“I love you, Jonathan. I just don’t think it’s in that way. And I don’t want to force something that isn’t… there.” She tilts her head at him, a fond smile forming on her face at the memories. “You were there for me when this all started. You helped me sleep. You helped me eat when I couldn’t. You helped me get out of bed in the mornings. I mean, how can I _not_ love you?”

Jonathan smiles back, eyes glazed over with endearment and affection and heartbreak. She hates being the one that causes the pain. A singular tear makes its way down his cheek, the reflectance of a beginning’s end and an end’s beginning. Nancy leans forward and wipes away the tear with a smile that mimics his in its bittersweetness. 

“I love you too, Nancy. Always will.”

  
  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  
  
  


No one really wants to leave Joyce’s house after everything, because they know once they get home and are left to themselves, the reality of it all will set in.

The loss of Hopper sits heavily on Eleven and Joyce, hanging in the air like a fresh wound that hasn’t been bandaged quite yet. So does the hospitalization of Billy, in a similar way, gnawing at Steve and Max. Things manage to slightly settle after Jonathon, Nancy, Steve, and Robin all team up to make everyone breakfast to the best of their abilities. Joyce tries to intervene and haphazardly help, but Will and Jonathon coax her into her bedroom for some much needed rest, and so the teenagers are the ones left to overlook the children for the time being. 

It’s a quiet morning, despite how many there are in the house. 

There really isn’t much in Joyce’s fridge, so one of them decides to make Eggos and although Nancy didn't know who, it doesn’t turn out to be the best decision when Eleven starts crying at the table after seeing her plate. The kids swarm her in an instant, hands reaching out to soothe and hug and comfort, and Nancy has to choke back a sympathetic tear or two. The sight of them like that tears her up inside. She can tell that it’s the same for Jonathon and Steve and even Robin, who frowns emphatically.

They eat in a somber quiet, and eventually, people filter out in small groups. 

Steve leaves with Max and Robin, the three of them going to the hospital for Billy, and everyone waves them off. 

Nancy crams Dustin, Erica, Lucas, and Mike into her car following their lengthy goodbyes to the Byers’ family and Eleven. It’s a tight fit but it'd do for now.

She doesn’t mind the individual trips to everybody’s homes in the slightest, letting Mike sleep in the front seat all the while. No one really speaks, letting the radio’s music fill the silence, but when their destinations are reached, a hug is exchanged between everyone. Even Mike, who arises from his half-awake slumber to lean over and wrap his arms around whoever is on their way out of the car.

It takes a while, and Nancy has to stop to get gas three-quarters of the way through (during which she placates the kids with some sugary candy), but they finally manage to get home. 

Mike and Nancy collapse onto the couch immediately. The cushions sink beneath them. Their home is almost silent, aside from the snoring of their dad upstairs and their intermingled breaths. Nancy’s never truly enjoyed her living-room as much as she did now, with its tacky carpet and its ugly wood panelling. If it were up to her, she’d pass out right here, right _now_ with her dirty clothes still on.

“I can’t move,” Mike groans in exhaustion, face-down.

Nancy can only manage a grunt in agreement, eyes closed. A thought crosses her mind, sudden and intrusive. “What do we tell Mom and Dad? Do we even _tell_ them anything?”

At that, he shifts so that he’s on his stomach and scoffs. “Hell no! Let’s just- keep things how they are. It’s _fine._ ” Mike looks at her, challenging, and she knows what a glare like that means. She _knows_ that if one of them told Mom about it, they’d never get to leave the house again. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Nancy wrings her hands and sits up, her legs aching. Mike stays as is, unmoving in his position, and hums in contemplation. A moment of recollection passes between them. The sun has risen long ago by now, the horizon dipped in hues of azure and yellow swirls.

“Nancy?”

“Hm?” She looks up at him.

“Race you to the shower!” He barely gets through the first half of his sentence before he’s off, dashing upstairs with quick steps, leaving Nancy in the dust before she can even stand up. 

She stares at the stairs in exasperation for a long while and then laughs.

Some things never change, do they? Normalcy peaks through, fragments of hope, even in the hardest times. And Nancy cherishes it.

  
  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  
  
  


The following days pass quickly, much to her surprise.

A fairly large portion of Nancy’s time was spent with Mike, the two of them helping Mom make dinner most nights (much to her surprise) and indulging in the silent comfort of each other's company, all while trying to get back to their normal routines. They seemed to both share a collective mind, both worried about things out of their control— or _people,_ rather, for Mike. It didn’t take a genius to tell that he was concerned about Eleven’s well-being. She had nowhere to call home as of now. 

Either way, they both try to push the doubts out of their minds with distractions and mundane tasks. Yet, even that isn't enough, and it all sours soon enough.

Things go to shit when they all sit down in the living room after dinner, Nancy supposes.

It’s the four of them— three, not counting Dad because he’s fast asleep on the recliner— watching the news. Nancy feels weird about it for some reason. She’d been fighting a monster made of flesh less than twenty four hours ago, and now? Now, she’s just mindlessly sitting on the couch and elbowing Mike in the side as they wait for the day to end.

But then, that weird feeling turns to pure nausea, her stomach dropping when an image of Hopper shows up on TV. 

“Oh my…” Mom puts a hand over her mouth, gasping.

Nancy can see Mike’s entire demeanor shift instantaneously out of the corner of her eye, dread and unease and sadness flashing across his face in an instant. The words coming out of the news anchor's mouth are fuzzy and indistinct, hard to make out for some reason, and all that she manages to catch is “...went missing last night…” and “...unknown whereabouts…”.

Bullshit.

Nancy can’t stand to hear it. She stands up slowly, plants her feet, and begins to walk. Mike doesn’t even glance at her, keeps watching even though he knows what they’ll say anyways.

“Nancy?” Mom turns around to look at her as she leaves, worry etched into her features.

“Gonna go to bed. Night.” Nancy quietly says, casting a forlorn glance in her direction. 

God, she’s going to be sick. 

Nothing feels real. Some kind of weird joke, some strange illusion, all of it. Nancy doesn’t understand. 

Hopper is gone. It finally sets in. She thinks he might’ve been the glue managing to keep Hawkins from tearing itself into two and falling apart. Every single time the Upside-Down opened up and things went wrong, he was right there all over again, someone that any of them could look to and just think: _we’re going to be okay._

He was just that kind of person. The kind of guy that’s always around and ready to fix things no matter what, even if it means his life is the compromise. Now there’s no one.

Nancy doesn’t know when she reaches her room, or when the TV turns off and everyone migrates upstairs into their separate rooms, leaving the house utterly quiet. It’s a blur. Her thoughts meld together as she turns in her bed, hands clutching at the sheets tightly. Time trickles by until eventually it’s only her and her thoughts left to suffocate.

The night sky glistens from above in a familiar glow, pale blue light casting its way onto silken sheets and shaking hands. 

It reminds her of Robin, of every moment she’s spent with her underneath the moon.

Halloween. The quarry. Joyce’s porch.

Nancy yearns for another one of those moments. 

Solace finds its way to Nancy in the form of a telephone cord wrapped around her fingers as she begins to dial, number by number, and leans back against her pillows to see the stars more clearly. This is the only thing that will ever make her feel whole, she thinks. The incessant pounding at the back of her head in the form of thoughts trickle away.

Robin answers after the fourth ring. “Hello?”

Nancy bites her lip. “Hey.” 

“Nancy?” There’s the sound of rustling on the other end of the line, then a tiny laugh. “You know it’s like almost 1am, right?”

“Oh.” Nancy moves so that she’s sitting closer to her window. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

Robin pauses, and Nancy begins to worry that she hung up, but then she speaks again. “Sorry- I forgot you can’t see me. I was shaking my head like a dumbass. No, you didn’t wake me.”

She snorts loudly at that, amused. “ _Such_ a dork.”

“Am not. Why’re you calling, anyways? Missed the sound of my voice that bad?” She teases. Nancy can almost _see_ her waggling her eyebrows on the other line, clear as day. Her heart flutters.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being so annoying?” Nancy quips, listening to the sound of Robin’s snort with a smile before continuing. “I couldn’t really sleep, so.”

“Yeah.” Robin sighs into the phone. “How… How’d you manage to sleep after all of this for the first time?”

A hand goes to Nancy’s chin. After a moment, she speaks. “I didn’t.”

“Ah.” Robin lets a sound of frustration slip.

“Sorry. I bet you were expecting something better.” She furrows her eyebrows and tries to think a bit harder, reminiscing. “I mean, honestly, I just had nightmares for almost a week straight after everything.”

“Yes! That- I keep having those. _God,_ it’s so annoying. I can only get, like, thirty minutes of sleep at a time.” Robin huffs with irritation.

“I haven’t even tired sleeping yet.” She bitterly chuckles, rubbing at her face. Robin seems like she’s waiting for more, but Nancy isn’t willing to give anything else, and so they sit in a terse silence.

The silence perpetuates, and Nancy clears her throat in an attempt to try and steer their conversation back into familiar territory. Topics like these— nightmares, fears, being scared— she’s never talked about them with anyone before. The part of her that’s familiar with shutting herself out from the world wants to not talk about it at all, yet at the same time, there’s a sense of relief and comfort that comes with being able to have someone that _understands._

And even then, despite Robin not completely understanding back when they were on the porch, she was still there and she simply took it as it was, didn’t question anything. That’s okay, too. More than okay.

Nancy takes a deep, deep breath, and after a moment of consideration, decides that she’s going to talk about it again because why the hell not.

“At first I couldn’t even close my eyes for long. I’d see a Demagorgan every time. Sleep was something else entirely. I’d always run and run and run through the Upside-Down. Then one of them would corner me, open its mouth, and before I was attacked I’d wake up.” She runs a hand through her hair, stray curls falling into tired eyes. 

On the other end, Robin grimaces. “That sounds horrible, Nancy.” 

“Well, what about you?"

“What?”

“Your nightmares. What are they about?”

Silence, once again. Nancy doesn’t say anything, knowing the difficulty of having to explain something so personal, and instead twirls her fingers along her cyan telephone cord as she waits. She wishes she were with Robin so that she could hold her, stroke her head gently as she spoke. It’s a constant yearning of hers, always stirring within Nancy as a reminder of sorts. 

“It’s Steve.” She almost whispers. Nancy leans forward in her bed, listening closely. “I keep having this nightmare where he dies while we’re in that Russian base. And I can’t do anything about it, I can only listen to his heart stop. Then I die, too, after they inject me. I don’t know, it- it sounds stupid.”

Robin told her all about it before they left for the hospital. The way she’d described it— being utterly convinced that you were going to die in some random place, left to rot for months with no one to know how or why or where you died— sounded a lot like how she’d felt in the Upside-Down back then. 

“That’s not stupid at all, Robin.” She shakes her head, speaking gently.

There’s a shaky exhale on Robin’s end. Nancy looks up to the moon, wondering why it had to be them of all people. Why _they_ were the ones pulled into the mess that was Hawkins, Indiana.

“When things got rough, for me—” She begins to speak without really thinking. “—Jonathon was usually there. He’d just, you know, make sure I still took care of myself.” Nancy can feel the air between them shift, growing strained. She knows why, tries to fix it. “We… broke up.”

Yet _another_ silence passes, this one more surprised and contemplative rather than hesitant. Nancy despises herself for having such minimal restraint when it comes to Robin. 

“Does this ever get easier?” Robin asks, suddenly.

Nancy finds herself at a loss. “I... don’t know. I hope so.”

“We...” Robin pauses. “We’ll figure it out, together.” She seems resolute, more-so than Nancy thinks she’s ever been before. _Together._ The two of them. The prospect sounds completely different now that Robin knows she’s single. It's a promise.

Nancy feels her pulse race. Slowly, she grins. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Call me again if you can’t sleep?” Nancy can hear the smile in Robin’s voice.

“Sure.” 

  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  
  
  


It happens again the next night. Nancy tosses and turns restlessly, unable to fall asleep, and for once— she doesn’t mind.

Robin answers after two rings, this time. 

“Guess who,” Nancy says, remote in her hand as she stares at the TV. She’s been debating between Police Academy, Footloose, and Rain Man for the past ten minutes. They all seem mediocre at best, if she’s being honest. The prospect of talking to Robin is much more exciting than any movie.

“Do I have to?” Robin snorts, amused. 

“Fine, you’re excused. But you have to pick a movie for me, instead,” She requests, shifting onto her stomach. “Police Academy, Footloose, or—”

“ _Footloose?_ Wow, you have literally no taste. I don’t even need to hear the third option. Watch Police Academy.” Robin retorts. 

Nancy scoffs, a grin finding its way onto her face. “Okay, _rude._ I wanted a variety of options!” 

“And? There’s a million better options than that, dingus.” Her voice crackles over the phone, like the well-stoked embers of a fire, and Nancy softly frowns. She’s tired of them only ever hearing each other through calls.

“ _That_ bad? I’m definitely returning this tomorrow,” Nancy hums, legs dangling off her bed.

“You’re lucky I know the good from the bad,” She chuckles.

“Are you, like, a total movie-buff?” Nancy inquires, brow lifted curiously. 

“I mean, I guess you could say that,” Robin remarks. She offhandedly wonders how many tapes she must have.

An idea abruptly blossoms within Nancy, small and reluctant at first. She worries her lip between her teeth, palms clammy with nervousness. The more she thinks, the more it festers and grows into something that Nancy can’t ignore, too good to pass up. Fuck it. 

“You should come over with a movie or something. Show me some legit stuff. I have a TV in my room.”

Robin answers almost immediately. “Oh, uh, sure. What genre?” 

Nancy blinks, a tad bit startled at her lack of hesitance. Still, she smiles. “I- Anything. I’m okay with whatever. You know where I live, right?” She thinks about Halloween, when she’d given her that ride home, and her cheeks flush with the feelings that accompany the memory.

“Sort of. Not really. I was drunk when I dropped you off on Halloween, so.” Robin says, understanding what she was alluding to.

“Oh. Right.” Nancy laughs. They’re such a mess.

It takes a little while for them to finally hang up, between Nancy giving her address and Robin poking fun at how she had stumbled across the lawn that night (which leads to even more bickering), but soon enough they say goodbye.

Nancy sits in the middle of her bedroom, eyes wide as she registers the fact that Robin’s actually coming over, holy _shit._ Slightly panicked eyes dart across the room in search of clutter, and as she glances from surface to surface, she realizes that she’s wearing what might potentially be her ugliest pair of pajamas.

“Shit,” Nancy curses underneath her breath, rushing to her closet immediately. What was she supposed to wear? God, she feels so childish, worrying about her clothes, but she just can’t help it. What she’s wearing now— a jumpsuit with a pattern so out-dated even her mom wouldn’t wear it— is something she wouldn’t be caught dead in.

By the time she picks out what to wear, slipping on a pastel nightgown that goes down to her knees, there’s no time to even worry about any potential mess on her floor or desk. Nancy sits on her bed and fiddles with the hem of her skirt nervously, feeling stupid about how worked up she is.

The last time she snuck someone in was probably when she was dating Steve, and he’d saunter in with his well-coiffed mullet and his preppy clothes so that they could ‘study’ — his shitty excuse for making out while Nancy silently wondered why she wasn’t as excited when they’d kiss as she was when she’d sit in Trigonometry with Robin and they’d talk, just talk.

Man, she was in deep from the _very_ beginning, wasn’t she?

Nancy’s hands go to her rosy cheeks, growing flushed all the way to the tips of her ears. She grumbles, trying to will the redness away, but before she can get herself together there’s a knock at the window. 

Nancy freezes, tilts her head. Beyond the sheer curtains, she can make out the silhouette of someone kneeling on her roof with a backpack hanging off their shoulders. She grins reflexively. 

“I almost busted my ass getting up here, so you better be thankful!” Robin says when Nancy opens the window and moves the curtains to the side. Her words sort of trail off and get quieter at the end, when she looks up at her and her eyes slowly stray to her nightgown.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m _so_ thankful. Now get your ass in here before someone spots you and calls the cops because they think you’re robbing us, idiot.” Nancy casts a quick glance outside, weary of any potential witnesses. The hot summer air hits her as she does, overbearingly warm. She looks down to see… nothing. 

Nothing? Her eyebrows furrow.

“Uh, _where’s_ your bike?” She asks as Robin climbs in and dusts herself off. She’s wearing a random tee and some _very_ short shorts, her legs almost entirely bare. Somehow the sight is entirely different compared to when Nancy goes to Scoops Ahoy and sees her in her uniform with those frumpy pants because uh, wow, her brain is short-circuiting.

“Left it at Starcourt Mall when the place burnt to a crisp. It’s probably just melted metal by now.” Robin jokes, dropping her backpack onto the floor. 

Nancy moves her jaw and tries to get a reply out, eyes glancing up and down and everywhere. “Wait. So you walked here?” 

“No, I _swam_ here. Of course I walked here.” Robin sarcastically says. Nancy stares at her. She stares back, brow slowly lifting. “What?”

“You- I should’ve given you a ride! Why didn’t you tell me?” Nancy gesticulates at nothing in particular, slightly flustered as she plops onto her bed. 

“That would’ve _definitely_ blown my cover! Walking was just safer. It’s fine, I’m here now and that’s all that matters.” Robin shrugs, crouching down to rummage through the assorted movies she seems to have stuffed into her bag without any thought, nose pinched as she concentrates. Cute. 

“If you say so,” Nancy sighs in defeat, leaning back. 

VHS tapes thump against each other as nimble fingers skim along each individual one. Nancy simply observes, lets her chest rise and fall with the calm that always envelopes her whenever she’s around Robin. This might just be the best idea she’s had all summer, asking her to come over. Cicadas chirp further off into the night, window still ajar. The occasional breeze floats in, curtains swaying with each gust, and the warmth of it is inviting.

She doesn’t talk for a while, not wanting to disrupt their serenity. 

It’s Robin who speaks up first, quiet and almost groggy-sounding already, like just being around her has eased things if not just the tiniest bit. Like she’s more than okay with falling asleep as is, no movie involved. 

“I’m thinking Born in Flames. That okay?” Robin inserts the tape, tossing the remote to Nancy. She barely catches it, not really paying attention.

“Sure. What’s it about?” Nancy murmurs, sitting up so that she can tuck herself beneath the blankets. Remote in hand, she starts the movie. Robin turns off the lights and wrings her hands, looking sheepish for a moment. She knows what that look on her face means immediately, has seen it too many times before. 

“I’m not letting you sleep on the floor, Robin.” She pats the spot on the bed next to her, nodding her head. Robin purses her lips and clambers onto the mattress, tucking herself in. Their legs brush instantaneously and electricity shoots through Nancy, the sparks tingling beneath her skin.

Robin clears her throat like she has something stuck, something she can’t get out. She forms a smile that looks pulled taut. “It’s basically about women overthrowing the government.”

Nancy makes a noise of acknowledgment, only half-focused on the movie that begins to play. Her stare is fixed on Robin and her freckles and her hair and her eyes again. “Sounds way better than Footloose, I gotta admit.”

“I knew you’d say that!” Robin gleams proudly, eyes twinkling. Nancy turns so she’s facing her, not even bothering to pretend like she’s watching the movie anymore. She wants to see her smile. “It’s great. Not really that well-known though, since it’s pretty out there.”

“You know, I heard Footloose was _really_ popular.” Nancy grins, settling on a smile of endearment when Robin rolls her eyes and turns so that she’s facing her as well. Nancy’s arms twitch with the ache of wanting to touch and caress.

“Who the hell told you that?” Robin asks, head on her pillow. They’re inches away from one another now, practically whispering like they want to hide their solace away from the world, their refuge.

“Dustin. He knows the weirdest things.” Nancy shakes her head. She laughs.

Nancy watches as Robin’s hand settles in between them, outstretched. Tentatively, she reaches out. Their pinkies intertwine. Robin looks down and smiles.

“Yeah. He does.” Robin says. Nancy smiles back.

Robin’s the first to fall asleep between them, after all the stupid jokes and the hushed giggles, their hands eventually intertwining. Nancy thinks that dealing with the trauma of the Upside-Down has never been easier than with someone by her side that actually cares. Robin makes her feel like she isn’t sinking into oblivion, like things will always turn out for the best around her.

Nancy doesn’t have any nightmares that night, and neither does Robin.

  
  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  
  
  


There are a lot of things to be expected during summer break in Hawkins, Indiana.

For one, you can expect _extremely_ humid weather. Like, drenched in sweat even though you only left the house for ten minutes kind of humid. You can also expect the public pool to be at max capacity almost constantly, filled with nasty bandaid-abandoning children that swim in chlorine for six hours at a time. And then there’s the killer parties that happen on almost every block when people’s parents leave for the summer and the resident dickheads in town think that they owe it to themselves to practically wake up every house within a mile radius with their music.

Nancy’s gotten used to all of that. Typical small town antics. All of it is standard stuff, really.

But what Nancy Wheeler least expected to happen during her summer, let alone during her entire fucking _life,_ was to wake up with Robin Buckley’s arm splayed across her waist as she slept.

Chipped black nail polish is all that Nancy can focus on, her entire body absolutely frozen as she comes to terms with the fact that she’s awake and her head is nestled into the crook of Robin’s neck. How in the _hell_ did they end up like this? Not that she’s complaining, by any means— it’s just overwhelming to wake up to is all. Not even thirty seconds after opening her eyes, her heart is already hammering against her ribcage, for Christ’s sake.

The warmth of Robin’s touch is all encompassing, like a blanket that’s more warm and cozy than Nancy can even wrap her head around, homely in its embrace. Their hair collectively spans across the pillows, an amalgamation of brown and blonde intermingling. She can feel Robin’s breath against her face as she very carefully removes herself from the spot between her shoulder and her neck, backing up to witness how mangled they’ve managed to become.

Nancy sucks in a breath as she looks down at Robin, astonished. The sunlight from the curtainless window touches upon her face, freckled splotches glowing as though they were individual stars for Nancy to look at with the same focus she would for the night sky. There’s a gentle squeeze on her hand, and with a glance, she realizes they’ve been holding hands all night. 

Oh God, her heart might just jump out of her chest at this point. It’s too much, too fast is what she wants to believe, but really, she knows she’d be lying to herself. 

This has been what she’s wanted to see in the morning, what she’s wanted to wake up to for a long time.

Their legs are so entangled that she can’t really move without waking Robin. That’s the excuse she uses as she lays back down and tucks herself against her neck once more, breathing in the faint scent of rose and cigarettes. A slow, profound sensation overtakes her, full of exhilaration and intimacy; it’s euphoric. She thinks if someone were to talk to her right now, she wouldn’t be able to conjure a proper sentence even if she wanted to.

The sheets rustle beneath Nancy and Robin. She feels movement, just barely noticeable, and realizes Robin must’ve woken up. She stiffens slightly, the sensation fleeting, and closes her eyes. 

“Nancy?” Robin mutters, voice slightly hoarse. Despite being awake, her hand doesn’t move from its place on her hip. 

Nancy takes that as a sign. 

“...Yeah?” Nancy quietly says into her shoulder, feeling terse. Her shoulders ripple with firmness, tense and untense, tense again. She doesn’t know where they stand anymore, after the almost kissing and the talking and the hand holding just last night.

“Oh. You _are_ awake.” She speaks in hushed tones, blonde locks tickling her cheeks. If Nancy leans in close enough and really holds her breath, she can hear Robin’s heartbeat. It’s fast, _really_ fast. Nancy’s eyes widen.

She retracts from Robin once more, this time with a renewed sense of awe. Robin looks unashamed albeit uncertain, the shape of her jaw sharp with how it’s clenched. They stare at one another. She feels Robin’s hand slide from her waist upwards, to her shoulder. It stops there, waiting. 

Nancy watches her eyes, how they turn to something even brighter than the sky itself beneath the sunlight, soft and hazy despite their vivid blue color. 

Robin’s lips part slightly. Nancy watches them, takes in the pinkish color of her mouth. She wants to kiss her, for real this time.

“Yeah?” Robin asks. It’s a question that means so, so much more than it lets on.

Nancy’s scared, again. 

But she’s more than that, she thinks she can be more than the fear with Robin. She makes her feel like it’s possible. Yes, she’s scared, but she’s also happy, and she’s warm, and she’s in love. 

“Yeah.” She breathes.

They kiss. 

Nancy thinks it feels different than any other kiss she’s ever had. It’s so soft and feathery, fleeting yet full of so much emotion that Nancy can’t help smiling into it. A hand moves from her shoulder to her jaw, Nancy leaning into the embrace fully this time. Their noses bump momentarily, awkward but somehow fitting for them. One of them giggles midway through, she can’t tell who. Robin leans back, and Nancy begins to follow her for another, but she’s laughing. Nancy stops in her tracks, confused.

“Sorry! I’m just…” Robin shakes her head, still laughing. Nancy smiles. “Happy.” 

“Yeah. Me too.” She softly says against her lips, breath ghosting over her mouth. Robin leans in happily, like a puppy waiting for a treat, and it’s so cute that it just about knocks the wind out of Nancy when their lips connect again. 

There’s more to it this time, she can tell. Robin places a hand on the back of her head and leans forward, pressing feverishly onto her, and Nancy welcomes it with open arms that snake around her sides. Every kiss says something different. Every nibble of the lip and every swipe of the tongue conveys something Nancy thought she’d never receive from _Robin Buckley,_ of all people. Bliss overcomes Nancy, and it’s evident in how she deepens the kiss with an intensity only Robin lights within her. 

She isn’t really sure how long passes (or how noisy they end up getting), but things happen and eventually, they sit there on her bed and try to catch their breath as Nancy looks up at Robin— who has somehow ended up practically straddling Nancy. 

“So.” Nancy blows her tangled curls out of her face, looking up at Robin with a grin, “That was a _pretty_ good way to start the morning, in my opinion.”

Robin laughs, arms on her thighs. Her hands are so warm that Nancy can feel the imprint of them wherever they remained afterwards, like the echo of a touch. “Agreed.”

“Well, now what?” She asks between a pant and yet another chuckle because she just can’t believe how things have turned out.

“I mean… I’m kind of hungry. You?” She watches as Robin leans forward slightly, hair falling onto her face, and lifts the back of Nancy's hand to her face. She kisses it, just once, and then grins.

Nancy stops breathing at that. She stares at her with wide eyes. “You’re gonna kill me, Robin.”

“Will not.” She hums, like what she does is ordinary, like the way she shows her love is nothing special. Nancy thinks she’d fight thousands of Demagorgans if it meant she got to see her smile one more time.

An ‘I love you’ sits in the back of Nancy’s throat. 

She swallows it down and instead rubs gentle circles into Robin’s hips, a smile on her face that just won’t leave. Another time, maybe. “Yeah, I could totally go for some french toast from Rosie’s Diner.”

“Oh my God, I haven’t heard that name in like years! We _gotta_ go,” Robin nods excitedly, eyes lighting up. 

“I can’t tell if you’re just really hungry or if you’re always like this in the morning,” Nancy says as she reclines into her pillows, the sunlight hitting her eyes. 

“Both?” Robin takes her moving to relax as a sign to dismount herself and collapse on the bed next to her. Nancy closes her eyes, inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass from outside. It makes her think about when Mike used to shittily mow people’s lawns for cash so he could buy new dice at that nerdy joint downtown. The old days. Where has the time gone? 

“Don’t tell me you’re a morning person.” She opens her eyes to squint at her. Robin purses her lips and settles for a shrug, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. Nancy wants to kiss that stupidly smug look right off her face. 

She realizes, in the moment, that she can actually do that now, and feels a familiar warmth wash over her once again. It’s joy, it’s excitement, it’s adoration. Nancy might just be on cloud nine.

“Get over here, you idiot,” Nancy can barely get the words out because Robin’s there already, as though she gets it and she’s just as full of budding warmth, and things derail for the millionth time.

They spend their morning like that, letting the sun hit their intermingled bodies as they languidly kiss and laugh and murmur lovingly, hearts finally full.

  
  
  
  


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Nancy feels like she’s floating the whole way down the stairs and through the front door because she just _cannot_ stop smiling, no matter how hard she tries, and it earns weird stares from her mother, who seems confused albeit happy that she seems to be in a good mood. 

They end up agreeing on Rosie’s Diner— with its syrupy food, slightly decrepit booths, and a really old boombox that only plays really outlandish music— and Nancy thinks it’s a nice place to go to for some reason, despite all the quirks and oddities, strangely enough. (Probably only because Robin’s coming with her, honestly.)

When she catches sight of her car, at the end of the driveway, Robin’s standing right by it. Her eyes avert from the yawn she covers with her hand towards the clothes she’s wearing. _Nancy’s_ clothes. The idiot forgot to bring some other clothes aside from her pajamas. 

Nancy’s shirt is sort of small on Robin, her midriff revealing itself whenever she moves too ostensibly in any way. Nancy has never been so thankful for their size difference because wow, what a _wonderful_ sight. For some reason, seeing her wear her clothes is captivating. It leaves her feeling light and airy for the millionth time, like she could take flight any moment.

“Did’ja have any trouble sneaking out the window?” Nancy yells from across the lawn, jogging over with a cheeky grin. Robin rolls her eyes.

“I got my- _your_ shirt stuck on some random hangnail on the way down. Aside from that? Smooth sailing.” Robin quirks a brow, leaning against the car. 

“Wow, you miss working at Scoops Ahoy don’t you? _Smooth sailing,_ ” She snorts, earning a shove on the shoulder. 

A stray breeze carries in gently, blowing wind into Robin’s messy locks. Only then does Nancy look at her fully, taking in something _aside_ from her clothes. “Man, you have a total bedhead.” She remarks, amused. 

Robin frowns and runs her fingers through a few miscellaneous knots, quaffing the tangles. “I was gonna fix it in the car, but thanks for noticing, dingus.” She sarcastically says. 

Nancy laughs, looking down at the car at the mention of its presence. “You know, I should really start charging you for gas with how much I drive you around.” Nancy offhandedly says, crossing her arms.

“Oh, please! You drive those shitheads around _way_ more than me.” Robin shakes her head, huffs indignantly. Nancy raises her brows. 

“Hell no, they have their bikes! Why would they need _my_ help?” She really drags on the last few syllables of ‘help’, making sure to pop the p and tilt her head. Robin stares at her, looking torn between astonishment and mirth.

“Yeah, well, I had a bike too _. Had._ ” She leans in slightly. Nancy forgets where they are at the sight of blue eyes scanning her face. “So you better get used to seeing a lot more of me.”

“Uh… huh.” Nancy swallows, licks her lips. She feels a hand go to her hair, brushing it back from her face absentmindedly. “You know, we could just skip lunch and go to the—”  
  


“—Robin? Why are you here?” The sound of tires skidding on asphalt stops their conversation immediately. Robin retracts at what Nancy thinks might just be the speed of light and tucks her hands into her pockets, cheeks aflame as she turns to the source of the sound. 

Mike is in the garage, hidden from the sun’s blistering heat. He’s sitting on his bicycle, with his left foot cocked out to keep him balanced, and Nancy apprehensively wonders how much he must’ve seen or heard. How long he must’ve been there.

Doe brown eyes narrow, glancing between Robin and Nancy. 

“Uh…” Robin freezes, staring at him with what looks like unease. 

Mike’s jaw slowly moves, like he’s forming his thoughts and conjuring them into words. His brows knit together and then relax in an instant. Something like realization and then surprise and then relief finds its way onto his face. Relief? 

“Hey,” He says, gripping onto his handlebar tightly, “Did your friend ever take Steve’s advice?”

Nancy blinks, mouth ajar. “Uh… yeah. Yeah, he did.” 

Mike hums. “Okay.”

And just like that, he picks his foot up and waves goodbye to both of them silently as he bikes down the driveway and into the street with an odd urgency. Gone as quick as he’d appeared; as though he had seen nothing. Nancy finds herself in a state of shock. 

“What was that about?” Robin tries to sound like she isn’t curious but desperately fails. Nancy crosses her arms. How would she even explain...

“Well, do you want the full story or a summary?” 

“Nancy, do you even _know_ who you’re talking to? Of course I want the full story.” 

  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  
  


Robin spends about five minutes laughing at Nancy’s stupid story— yes, _seriously,_ five whole minutes— and it would’ve been more annoying if her laugh wasn’t so cute. 

Instead of fondly berating her, Nancy settles on simply listening to her laughter and eating. It’s a calm thing, a gentle thing. Everything about today is like that. 

“You’re the worst liar ever,” Robin grins, stabbing at her omelette. Further off, the sound of singing makes itself known. Nancy glances over to see two children holding hands and dancing to Cyndi Lauper as it croons throughout the restaurant softly. She smiles, eyes wandering further off towards the subtly peeling wallpaper and the dusty decor. 

“Whatever,” Nancy huffs, swaying in her seat along to the music. Robin smiles at her. She smiles back, cheeks rosy. “This is nice.”

“It is.” Robin sighs, looking at her omelette with dorky adoration. Nancy chuckles.

Rosie’s Diner has always had this syrupy, slow-moving feel about it. As though when Nancy steps into it time trickles by and the world stops while they’re eating and laughing and talking. It’s especially noticeable now, with Robin by her side. She thinks she would get lost in a place like this if she really wanted to, swallowed up the infinite lapse of time. 

Nancy slides a piece of her french toast across the coat of syrup coating the plate, still smiling, and lifts it to her lips. Robin looks up from her dish and watches. She knows what that stare means. She’s known what it meant for a long time. Robin wants to kiss her. (She gave her that look at least three times in the car alone. Nancy’s not one to deny the pleas of the desperate.)

“Later.” Nancy utters, patting her hand. 

Robin bites her lip and nods. She looks like she wants to say something but decides to sip on her water tentatively instead. Pale blue eyes dart along the various tables surrounding their booth. She folds her hands across the table and gets that look on her face again.

“When did you realize you weren’t heterosexual?” Robin asks. 

Nancy makes a strangled sound, mid-swallow. She coughs, grabs at her napkin. “Why? That’s- Robin, I don’t know if I can—”

“—Oh, come on. I just...” She flounders, waving her arms around vaguely. Nancy watches as her face flushes. “It’s been on my mind, that’s all.” 

Nancy glares and cocks her head to the side, beckoning for an explanation.

Robin frowns. “You’re… you, Nancy. You’re Nancy Wheeler. And I’m Robin Buckley.” She pauses, runs a hand down her face in exasperation. “Look, I see couples everyday. You see that corner booth? They’re the first thing I noticed when I sat down here.”

Nancy follows her stare until she catches sight of a guy with his arm around a girl’s shoulder, the two of them sucking face like it’s no one’s business— because it _isn’t_. Jealousy flares up in Nancy, but more than that, there’s a sense of yearning. Wanting to be them, wanting to have what they have, wanting to kiss Robin without worrying about the world seeing them. 

“I used to look at couples like those and think that I’d never have that with anyone, let alone with you.” Robin gazes down at the tiled floor, fiddling with her fingers. “So, yeah, it’s been on my mind. A _lot._ ”

Nancy puts her fork down and flexes her hands, tries not to reach across the table and caress her as much as she so desperately wants to. After a moment, she speaks. “...Okay.”

“Okay, what?” Robin’s brows knit together. 

“Okay, I’ll tell you.” She reclines in her seat, the red leather of the booth squeaking beneath her. Robin leans forward, interested to hear her answer. 

Nancy thinks. 

She thinks about everything and everyone. The main thing that crosses her mind is Barbara, oddly enough. She’s always had this soft, gentle air about her that Nancy enjoyed. She loved her. But that wasn’t love of the romantic kind, that was the kind of love she knew all too well as something platonic. That train of thought derails quickly towards nothingness, and Nancy finds herself without any answer once again. 

She runs a hand down her face in exasperation, contemplating.

A single thought forms, fleeting in its notions, and Nancy isn’t surprised. It’s a flash of a memory, blindingly obvious and yet it leaves her silent for a long while.

“When… I met you, I think.” She slowly says. Robin freezes, eyes wide. “Trigonometry. I walked in and you had the stupidest grin on your face when you spoke to me for the first time. You told me there was gum stuck to Mrs. Sullivan’s pants. By the time class was over, no one told her about it, and you walked out while stifling a laugh like it was the funniest thing in the whole world. I couldn’t stop smiling after that for some reason.” 

Nancy is astonished at how well she remembers it, clear as day. After that, her head was sort of foggy in a way it had never been before, overcast with thoughts of a certain girl that sat next to her in her last period class. She didn’t quite comprehend nor like it at first. everytime a blonde head of hair would pass her, she’d catch herself staring. It was almost never Robin, but when it was, Nancy’d catch her eyes and they’d lock for a moment. Things were always a blur after that. An incomprehensibly captivated blur.

It’s Robin. She knows that undoubtedly, knows it's true.

Robin is silent for a moment, almost brooding, but then her head tilts back and she grins. It’s that same grin that was on her face the first time they met. Nancy’s lips tingle, an identification of her wants. “I was seriously grinning that hard? No way! I refuse to believe that.” 

Nancy’s mouth opens in astonishment. “Oh my god, _that’s_ what you’re choosing to focus on?”

“Sorry, sorry! I mean- wow, me? That’s… wow.” Robin struggles to find the right words, clearly flustered. “I don’t know _what_ to say.” 

Nancy knows how she gets when she’s overwhelmed. She’s sort of all over the place, like she was back at Starcourt Mall when Eleven pulled that weird monster out of her leg, blabbering about things that weren’t even remotely relevant (or appropriate) and forcibly fidgeting. She doesn’t think anything of it, instead saying, “Well, you asked, so. You got what you wanted.”

“Yeah.” Robin breathes out, biting her lip. “Hey, do you know Tammy Thompson?”

Nancy purses her lips, trying to recall, and the image of a girl with green eyes and wavy chestnut hair eventually emerges. “Oh, yeah! I had AP Biology with her this year. She sat two tables in front of me. Why?”

Robin lets out a long, tired laugh. “I used to pretend I liked her. Weird, huh? It was my way of dealing with the fact that you would’ve never liked me back. I was so bad at pretending that even Steve saw through my bullshit. Steve fucking Harrington.” 

Nancy goes slack-jawed at that one, because first of all— why in the fuck does Steve know about Robin being a lesbian— and second of all, ouch, she feels really bad for her. “Steve- he knows? Wh- But if he knows you were lying about Tammy, then…”

Robin stiffens slightly, shrugs, and gives Nancy a weak smile that says ‘Uh, sorry?’ 

“Are you fucking serio—”

“—Cut me some slack, Nancy! You were visiting like, every other damn day. And obviously you weren’t visiting for him. He would’ve figured it out sooner or later.” She drops her hands to her sides, eyebrows lifted in an indignant fierceness, like she knows she’s right. 

Nancy looks up to the ceiling and exhales, trying to collect herself. Some weird, brown strains are splattered everywhere she looks and it only serves to make her feel worse. Someone knew about them. Someone _else._ She thinks about Billy and his blood-red Camaro and shivers. Steve certainly wasn’t nearly as bad as Hargrove. He wouldn’t do anything to harm Nancy— or Robin, either, considering how close they seem to have gotten. The idiot sneaks into Robin’s house at least once every few days, apparently. Overbearing as always.

They’ll be fine.

“I’m… You have a point. I _did_ linger by the counter a lot. And Steve is the king of bullshit, so he has a sense for bullshit, anyways.” Nancy remembers calling him bullshit, that night. She frowns and decides that she’ll call him later, just to see how he’s doing. If he’s been sleeping alright. 

“ _Thank_ you! Was it really so hard to admit I was right, hothead?” Robin rolls her eyes, pointedly scraping her fork across her plate. 

Nancy glares at her. “Excuse me?”

“Diva.” 

“Geek.”

“Priss.”

“Dork.” 

“Dingus.”

Nancy breaks off into a laugh before she can get another insult out, too amused. Robin snorts, expression soft with endearment. Her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunches up. Nancy memorizes the sight, watches every line of her face and how it changes, beautifully.

“You are an _idiot,_ Robin Buckley.” Nancy grins, reaching out. Their hands connect and intertwine seamlessly underneath the table, where no one can see. She feels a thumb rubbing at her palm in tiny circles, soothingly and lovingly, and her heart skips a beat. “You’re lucky I like you.” 

“Yeah. I am.” Robin smiles. 

  
  
  
  


_________________

  
  
  
  


A lot happens after things settle. Some good, some bad.

For one: Nancy called Steve as soon as she got home after her… date, with Robin. (Yeah, she’s _still_ registering the fact that they’re dating. It’s been more than a week.) When he’d asked why she called, she didn’t really know what to say and simply admitted she wanted to check up on him. It was an honest thing. She couldn’t bring herself to lie about it, not when everyone was still trying to get back to themselves after everything. Letting him know she cared just felt right.

“Thanks. It’s been… hard. Hey- why don’t you, uh, meet me at that abandoned railroad on Driscoll Avenue? I have some booze sitting around and I don’t wanna drink alone, so.” Was what he told her in response.

And Nancy went. 

When her mom asked, she didn’t lie about that either, just said she was going to hang out with Steve somewhere— speaking her mind, again. She let her go without any qualms. 

They talked about everything and nothing, all at once. It was the kind of conversation that only an excessive amount of drinking could bring out, openly truthful to the point of stinging. Nancy talked about Robin, at some point, after he’d drunkenly mentioned her obscure obsession with Pat Benator. He listened, just listened, nursing a cold bottle of beer against his flushed red skin. 

And then he talked about Billy. Billy Hargrove. Nancy thought she must’ve gotten so drunk that she was hearing things.

But she wasn’t. And it was a shocker, yet at the same time it wasn’t. She’d seen how stressed he was that night, when Billy got wheeled off in an ambulance, outwardly trembling on the Byers’ couch alongside Max. She didn’t question it back then, chalked it up as having something to do with what he had gone through in that Russian base. 

But now? Now, it made more sense. 

And then, only a few days later, Joyce had rounded everybody up in her home to break the news. 

She was leaving with Will, Eleven, and Jonathon.

Nancy didn’t know what to make of it all. 

Joyce was an integral part of their dysfunctional family— and so was Eleven, and Will, and Jonathon— and she just couldn’t imagine things without them in the midst of Hawkins. She could tell that everyone else felt the same, could see it in the shake of Max’s shoulders and the very, _very_ quiet sniffles from Mike. 

And then there was Steve and his confession, his worries, his sleepless nights. She wanted to help but didn’t know how. Didn’t think she could even if she tried. 

It was all too much, for everyone.

  
  
  
  


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Days pass. Nancy processes things in the warmth of Robin’s embrace and hopes that maybe the sadness within her can be washed away by a blonde with blue eyes and freckles. 

It almost works, honestly. But then, then Steve and Joyce plan for a final get-together before they move out of town— and it comes back in gentle waves.

Nancy can’t help feeling downcast— and slightly on edge— when she arrives at Steve’s house, the memory of Barbara standing at the bottom of the steps lingering when she walks inside. They’d all agreed upon his home, mainly because the Byers’ were packing their stuff at the moment, and his parents were never home anyways (much to Joyce’s dismay).

It’d been a good idea at the time— but, as Nancy stands in the entryway with her fists tightly clenched, her mind is beginning to tell her otherwise. Dustin and Mike stand at her side, the two babbling incoherently about the usual nerdy shit they would any other day. There’s a heaviness to their conversation, the weight of Will leaving their pack hanging heavy in the air, and Nancy ducks her head down to avoid the sight of the staircase as she walks into the living room. 

The sound of splashing and music playing outside catches Nancy’s attention as she walks, and she looks up to see Max and Lucas splashing at each other in the pool. She blinks, rubs at her eyes, stands motionless. Dustin and Mike run off outside excitedly, and she just stares. Chlorine wafts into the home, the smell memory-inducing. She feels stuck, reliving that night in her mind so vividly all over again. It’s nauseating and revolting and she feels like she’s going to barf—

“Nance?”

She jolts, shoulders up to her ears. When Nancy turns, she finds Steve staring at her from the kitchen counter, a guilty look on his face. He knows. He notices.

“Do you…” She begins to speak, “Have any beer?"

He stares for a long moment, thinking. She lets him, doesn’t try to avert her gaze or hide. They simply read each other, watch how the other breathes, and it means more than words do. 

Finally, he says, “Yeah. I got that one you like, actually.” 

Nancy sighs. “Thank you, Steve.” He nods at her and half-smiles. She walks to the fridge with rigid steps, brushing past him. Silence spans out as she opens the door and finds a six-pack sitting there, as he said it would, next to some bologna and eggs. Nancy makes a slightly weirded out face and grabs onto the pack, placing it on the counter between them.

“Beer next to bologna, huh?” She arches a brow. 

Steve glances at the fridge, like he’d forgotten that he even did that, and Nancy snorts. 

“Well, where do you put _your_ beer, then?” He nods his head at her, un-gelled strands of hair falling onto his face. He blows on them, tries to get them to go away, and gives up after a few half-assed attempts. Same as usual, Nancy thinks with amusement. 

“I don’t buy alcohol. If I _want_ alcohol, I _find_ alcohol.” Is all she says before reaching for the bottle opener behind Steve. He sort of registers what she says and then nods, like he’s underestimated her.

“Pop one open for me, too.” He hums, resting his chin on his hand as he watches her go to remove the metal caps. She freezes, mid-removal, and tilts her head up at him. 

“Really?” 

He scowls. 

“Okay, okay.” Nancy shrugs, opens two bottles, and slides one to him. Steve catches it in his open palm. “I sort of half-expected you to be hungover, or something.” She mumbles.

Steve rolls his eyes at that and takes a long swig. A few driblets begin to fall from the bottom of the bottle and he wipes at his chin, not showing any signs of stopping. 

She observes quietly, sipping at her beer as though it were soda rather than alcohol. Honestly, if it were anybody else, Nancy would have been moderately disgusted. But it’s Steve, and Steve’s the one that’s killed countless demogorgons. Steve’s the one that lives in the house where someone died. Steve’s the one with the boyfriend in the hospital.

So she doesn’t say anything. She lets him drink as he pleases and reminds herself to place the Advil she bought for him in his kitchen before leaving later on.

Her glass bottle clinks against the chiseled counter as she sets it down. He does the same, rubbing at his mouth. She takes in the tired lines of his face. The bags under his eyes seem prominent, subtly blue and black, and his cheeks almost look sunken in a way. She grimaces.

“How’s Billy?” Nancy asks, because she worries.

He looks down, laughs hollowly, and shakes his head. “Still not awake. They don’t even have a timeframe for when he’ll get up. _If_ he does.”

Nancy opens her mouth, wanting to say something, but refrains. He gazes at her, the sun casting shadows from behind him, warping his appearance into something much more vulnerable and feeble than she thinks she’s ever seen from him before. That's what love does to you, Nancy thinks.

She leans over and pats his hand, letting her palm rest there. He slowly smiles at her, and the shadows shift, casting the faintest rays of luminosity on his face. It changes him, makes him look the slightest bit more okay for the time being. The shift is hopeful, somehow foreboding of things turning out for the better. 

They stay like that for a while, drinking and quietly talking until the rest of the group slowly trickles in and things get more lively. By then, Nancy is pleasantly buzzed— she’d forgotten how much of a lightweight she was, oops— and it’s obvious in the tiny sways when she steps. Steve seems to be the same. She can tell by how he openly laughs at almost everything. Further off, the door opens as they chatter, and Nancy doesn’t pay it any mind.

“Wow, the pack is finished?” Nancy absentmindedly rubs at the side of her face, sinking onto the kitchen counter. Her arms sprawl out in a lazy attempt at grabbing at a bottle cap. 

Steve looks at the empty six pack before them and makes an ‘Oh’ sound, eyes halfway closed. Nancy slowly straightens and gets up off her chair, the summer heat really starting to get to her. Maybe it’s because the doors leading to the pool are open, maybe it’s because she’s tipsy— she can’t discern what’s what right now. 

“I’m guessing Steve drank most of these?” A voice says. Nancy’s face lights up. 

When she turns, she finds Robin standing there, picking up a bottle of beer and checking what brand it was. “Hey!” Nancy says excitedly.

Robin’s gaze wanders from the beer towards her, then to Steve, who’s waving at her and shielding his eyes from the sun at the same time. She smiles and Nancy leans up for a kiss without thinking, on her tiptoes. Robin's lashes flutter and she parts her lips instinctively, but then her eyes flit to the pool. Nancy freezes. They could’ve kissed without any problems if it were just Steve here, but the kids were running about everywhere, coming in and out of the house constantly. She wouldn’t want them to see that.

“You smell like booze.” Robin glances from her eyes to her lips and a knot begins to form in Nancy’s stomach, tight and unrelenting. It’s funny, how she so badly wants what she already has. The feeling never leaves, no matter what happens, no matter where they are. 

“Can you guys not stare at each other ravenously, like, two feet away from me?” Steve interjects, looking somewhere between uncomfortable and reminiscent of someone, someone that he can’t have. Nancy frowns and backs up.

“Sorry.” Nancy can’t help feeling sheepish, but Robin, on the other hand, just seems downright sympathetic for him rather than anything else. It makes sense. She’s probably heard a lot more about it then Nancy has. Hell, Billy and her were almost friends.

“It’s f—”

“What the hell?” Dustin exclaims, appearing out of practically nowhere, and the suddenness of it makes all three of them jolt. They all swivel to see him gesturing wildly at the bottles. His hair is wet and he’s wearing blue goggles with a matching pair of swim trunks, equally blue in its color. Of course he matches his trunks to his goggles. Only him. “You guys are the only adults in this house! And you’re all drunk? What if a bear attacks or something, and then—"

“Okay, seriously. A _bear?_ In what world would a bear attack us in the middle of August—” Steve begins to say, but then Nancy and Robin are piping up with their own remarks.

“Uh, we aren’t adults! I’m not even eighteen yet, you—”

“Hey, for your information, I’m sober! And _also_ not eighteen. So the only adult here is technically Steve.” Robin shuts everyone up at that, jabbing a finger at Steve.

Dustin stares and then smacks a hand against his forehead, facepalming _very_ dramatically, and it earns stares from both Mike and Lucas outside. Nancy bites the inside of her cheek to keep from loudly laughing, and Robin kicks her in the shin when she looks over and sees the mirth written across her features so clearly. 

“When Joyce gets here, I’m—”

“No!” Steve exclaims. “ _Dustin._ ” There’s a scolding tone to his voice, even though Dustin hasn’t done anything to earn that. He stares at him, arms crossed.

Nancy glances between them and wonders, deeper within herself, if Dustin might actually be worried about _something_ that wasn’t a bear attacking them. Something with a petal-shaped head and countless rows of jagged teeth, ready to bite. It’s a valid concern. She thinks about it, so why wouldn’t he think about it either?

“We’ll be fine, Dustin.” Nancy assures him, dissolving the stare-off they seemed to have engaged in. Dustin gazes at her and purses his lips, thinking. 

“Okay,” His voice is even and his expression is just as even, not showing anything that’d reveal too much, “But if any of us get mauled, then you’re all liable. Not just Steve.”

Steve slowly grins, leaning over to ruffle his hair only to be swatted away. “Sure, man.” 

Dustin gives them a final scan, chiding them into throwing out the bottles before Joyce and everyone else arrives, and goes back out to the pool once more.

“What a stickler,” Robin remarks, after everything is clean and practically spotless. 

“I mean, you can’t blame him.” Steve retorts, and he almost kind of sounds like an older brother defending their sibling. Robin falls quiet at that, rolling her eyes.

Nancy hums in acknowledgement. “Fair enough.” 

They all slowly move from the kitchen to the living room, settling on the couch to watch everyone splash around outside. It’s mostly tranquil aside from the occasional bickering and cannon balls from Lucas. Eventually, Joyce and the other Byers’— including Eleven— arrive, and soon enough everyone trickles out towards the pool. Jonathan smiles at her as he passes, ducking his head.

It’s a warm summer evening, but not _hot,_ simply warm. Occasionally a humid breeze will pass through and the trees will rustle, revealing specks of orange sunlight wherever they choose. A swim in the pool would probably be really refreshing, cooling for the skin— but Nancy can’t bring herself to think of anything other than Barbara. She opts to instead stand under an umbrella and watch as Will tries (and fails) to take a small step into the water before Dustin pushes him waist-deep without any warning.

Hand on her hip, Nancy shifts to face Robin, who’s claimed the reclining beach chair directly beneath the umbrella. She looks up at her through narrowed eyes, the sun in her face. Nancy’d told Robin about her a little while ago, when it was just the two of them laying on her roof sharing a joint. She remembers it vividly, recalling how Robin made sure to hold her in her arms as securely as possible later on in the night.

“Are you wearing a swimsuit?” She asks, and Nancy gets snapped back to reality in an instant. 

Nancy shakes her head immediately. “I wouldn’t be able to get in even if I wanted to.” 

Robin nods, understanding. She smiles at her, softening around the edges, and moves to sit on the edge of her chair. Her gaze wanders momentarily, down to her feet. Out of everyone Nancy has met, she thinks Robin understands her best— understands the things that can build her up and tear her apart in an instant. Having someone that gets it is unlike anything else. It’s more than trust or love or compassion. 

It’s always been one thing, and it will always be that one thing. Sanctuary. Forever in time, never to leave her so long as Robin’s by her side, sanctuary.

Nancy’s completely softened now, like the ebb and flow of an egg when the yolk breaks, warmth leaking out wherever it finds the room to do so. She clambers across the chair and slowly, very carefully— situates herself between Robin’s legs. Her back reclines against the rise and fall of her chest. 

“Why are you—” Robin doesn’t stiffen despite herself, simply stays as she is.

“It’s only them, Robin.” Nancy gently says. 

She’s tired of having to constantly hide their relationship in public, and this isn't public. This is family. Family. The people that love no matter what happens, unconditionally. Mike and Steve and Eleven and Joyce and— all of them.

“...Okay.” She murmurs, gingerly running her hands through Nancy’s hair. She can feel her breath on her neck when she moves the strands aside. The sensation sends a shiver down her spine.

No one even bats an eye aside from Steve who strolls over and hands Robin a beer with a grin, despite the deep-seated fatigue on his face. One arm moves to sip on the beer and the other snakes around her waist and stays there, warm in its touch. Nancy leans against her, head tilting back to smile up at her.

They watch as people splash and swim and play. Nancy feels the haunting, traumatized memory of Barbara being left to die in Steve’s house fade away, replaced by Robin’s arms wrapped around her and the kids— her _family_ — having fun. Steve and Dustin bicker off to the side of the pool, and the two of them don’t pay any mind to it until Steve shoves Dustin into the deep end of the pool and Dustin pulls him in with him. Robin laughs.

Nancy can feel Robin’s heartbeat all around her, in the air and in the way it quickens when she leaves a peck on her cheek.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever be scared again.

“Robin?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” 

Robin looks down, eyes widened and glazed over with captivation. 

“I love you too.”

Nancy feels Hawkins shift beneath her feet, moving towards something different.

Something better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you might be wanting more stranger things content from me, i may or may not have a few ideas in the making for billy/steve, max/eleven, and, of course-- robin/nancy once again! you'll be sure to see me again floating around the stranger things tag lol.
> 
> thank you for sticking around till the end. <3


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